


Repair

by dareyoutoread



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: AU from Season 1 Mid-Season Finale, Bass and Miles Swear Like Sailors, Bass and Miles are Military Badasses, Gen, Redemption Arcs All Around, Road Trip!, Snarky Banter, Sooooo Many Character POVS It's Like F-ing Wheel of Time Around Here, Sword Fighting, What Miles Should Have Done Instead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-08 12:43:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 46,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8845561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dareyoutoread/pseuds/dareyoutoread
Summary: re·pair 1 (r-pâr)v. re·paired, re·pair·ing, re·pairs.1. To restore to sound condition after damage or injury; fix: repaired the broken watch.2. To set right; remedy: repair an oversight.3. To renew or revitalize.4. To make up for or compensate for (a loss or wrong, for example).
 
Begins right before the Season 1 mid-season finale. Ensemble piece with Bass as the focus (though you'll get LOTS of other POVs - including, of course, Miles). Not slash. Miles had several options in that power plant face-off - this story will focus on the aftermath of one option we haven't seen yet (so, AU from halfway through Season 1 - when all the characters we knew and loved were still alive...and still the characters we knew and loved ;-).





	1. Schematics

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read this over on fanfiction.net, thanks! And guess what? Years later, I think I'm finally going to finish it! I know, I know; I'm as surprised as you are. Probably as surprised as Bass when he (spoilers) decides to drag Aaron along with him in Chapter 19. I'll cross-post new chapters to both sites, but it was just time to collect all my fic in one place.

_**re·pair** _ _1 (r-pâr)_  
_v._ _**re·paired, re·pair·ing, re·pairs** _  
_._  
_**1.** _ _To restore to sound condition after damage or injury; fix: repaired the broken watch._  
_**2.** _ _To set right; remedy: repair an oversight._  
_**3.** _ _To renew or revitalize._  
_**4.** _ _To make up for or compensate for (a loss or wrong, for example)._

**Disclaimer: Oops! Almost forgot this this time. BTW, I don't own "Revolution" or any of its characters. Aaand, this fic is for fun, not for profit.** _  
_

_Schematics  
_

_"A_ _ **schematic diagram**_ _represents the elements of a system using abstract, graphic symbols rather than realistic pictures. A schematic usually omits all details that are not relevant to the information the schematic is intended to convey, and may add unrealistic elements that aid comprehension."_ \- Wikipedia

Sebastian Monroe doesn't sleep particularly well, and tonight is not a departure from the norm. It's past two in the morning, and the power plant is silent - always silent - around him as he paces the floor of his secondary office. If he believes the reports - and there are too many now to ignore - then Miles is actually on his way here. A day away, at most.

Bass slumps into the chair behind his heavy oak desk, closing his eyes for a moment. He's been running scenarios in his head for weeks - ever since he heard Miles might be heading back to Philadelphia - and he still doesn't have a clue how this is going to play out.

He'd kept thinking that Miles was pulling some elaborate long con, the kind he couldn't even tell Bass about. The escape, even the attempted assassination, had to have all been a ruse to convince the men that he'd truly deserted. As the years had passed, Bass had held on to that hope - after all, each of Miles' actions could be explained. He'd had to stay away so long because the rebels would never believe he'd truly abandoned the Militia after a year, or even three years. Or five. When the eight-year mark came and went, Bass had thought, surely, this was the year Miles would unveil his grand plan. He'd unify all the rebel camps and lead them into Philly, having sent word (finally) to his _best friend_ , and then he'd walk those damn traitors straight into Bass's waiting trap.

And he'd finally have his best friend back. The Militia would finally have its (real) General back. The men would stop complaining behind his back, and Jeremy would stop giving him that carefully schooled look every time Miles was mentioned.

But when, for the first time in eight years, somebody had finally brought him news of Miles Matheson, it was…unexpected. Miles was coming here…to free his brother's kid? How in hell did that fit in with the con? When Jeremy had returned from the field claiming to have caught Miles _in a rebel camp_ , Bass had felt a breath of hope. And then Neville returned, claiming to have seen (and fought) Miles in the flesh at the train station in Noblesville, where he had apparently assisted with and ultimately prevented a rebel train bombing. And Bass had thought, maybe it was all true.

It would be one fucking hell of a long con, but that was Miles - committed to a fault. Maybe he'd helped those rebels rig that bomb and known he couldn't have that many Militia deaths on his head, so he'd pulled if off the train once no one was watching.

Maybe his stint with the rebellion wasn't working out so well, and the whole "rescue the kid" thing was just an excuse to get back to Philadelphia.

Maybe.

Bass sighs and rubs his temples, bending forward over the carved oak desk. _Maybe_ Rachel knows something about getting the power on, _maybe_ Miles is coming back to join him, _maybe_ he'll last another week without Neville or - God - even Jeremy putting a gun to his head.

Hell, the only reason they're letting him lead now is that he has them convinced he can find out how to turn the lights back on. If he fails there, then even the fact that they're all scared shitless of each other may not help him anymore. At the moment, everyone knows that if they breathe a word of treason, someone around them will be self-serving enough to march right into Bass's office and turn them in. It's the reason he's made a habit of giving snitches promotions: so that it remains less risky to move up within his structure than to try to overthrow it.

But if he fails to get the power back on…

Bass pushes up from his desk abruptly, straightening his uniform and running his fingers through his curly hair to smooth it back to order. He strides from the room, nodding to the guard outside the door, and hurries down the hallway.

Three turns and two sets of doors bring him to the room where Rachel has been working. He doesn't knock - she'll be sleeping in her cell by now anyway - just steps slowly into the open space, automatically scanning the room for threats before he turns toward the machine.

He'd been good at math in high school, but shit at car repair and electronics. Math made sense - it was linear; consistent; straightforward. All this science crap just ran you in circles. He had looked at this damned machine _every night_ for the past week, and it never made any more sense to him.

Miles had been the one who had always seen how things worked. One time, when they were on leave, he had pulled out the engine block in Bass's broken-ass car and rebuilt most of the engine from parts, patiently pointing out how each joint and hose and piston connected to the whole. Bass had tried to pay attention (honestly, he'd been a little distracted texting a super-hot chick he'd picked up while out running that morning), but Miles might as well have been speaking French for all he'd understood of it. That engine that Miles could look at and take apart with his brain just looked like a big, oily hunk of metal to Bass.

And this… _thing_ that Rachel is building, no matter how many times he looks at it, just looks like a fucking tangle of wires.

He lets out a tight-lipped sigh of irritation and runs his fingers through his hair again, trying to calm himself down. _This_ is the solution, right in front of him. This machine is going to turn the power back on.

It has to. It will work, _everything_ will work, and then the world will be his, so he can make it _safe_. So he can crush the rebels, the Georgia Federation, and all the other republics once and for all, so Miles can come out of hiding, so they can disband the Militia and set up a real government, so he can stop playing games with Rachel and torturing people for information and spying on his own captains and worrying about assassination attempts and he can finally just _be_.

He can go back to drinking at bars and one-night stands and - hell - to _playing video games_ , and no one will question him or look at him sideways ever again, because he'll be the goddamned hero who brought the power back.

And then all this will have been worth something. That's the plan, and either Miles is coming here to help, or he's coming here to blow it all to hell.

And what keeps Sebastian Monroe up at night is that he has _no fucking idea_ which.


	2. Ignition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we verge into AU territory. Begins near the end of "Nobody's Fault But Mine," when Miles and Bass have their semi-epic face-off. I thought the writers could have made more interesting character choices in this scene, and the choice you'll see here is the one I would have preferred.
> 
> MAJOR thanks to buttercups3 for some excellent information on the military, firearms, and ballistics that greatly informed this chapter! Any remaining silly mistakes are mine, not buttercups3's! :-)
> 
> Disclaimer: Although the beginning of this scene is played pretty straight from "Nobody's Fault But Mine," including use of some of the original dialogue, I must legally remind you all that I don't own "Revolution," or these characters, or that borrowed dialogue, and am just having a hell of a good (but definitely not financially profitable) time playing in this universe. Also, after this, we're off into full AU territory. I don't mind skirting around the edges of episodes, but I hate repeating them. I do so here only inasmuch as is necessary to get to the real plot. :-)

_Ignition_

_**"ig·ni·tion** _

_/igˈniSHən/_

_Noun_

_**1.** The action of setting something on fire or starting to burn._

_**2.** The process of starting the combustion of fuel in the cylinders of an internal combustion engine."  
_

_\- Google Dictionary  
_

It's funny how a moment you've been dreading for time immemorial can be there and gone in a few short seconds.

Miles Matheson stares down the rifle barrel at Bass - at _Monroe_ \- and grits his teeth to still his shaking hands. Hell, he's standing five feet away holding a goddamn semi-automatic rifle and he's still not sure he's going to hit his target.

"You just gonna kill me?" Bass says, a hard edge in his voice. It's a fair question.

Miles is focusing so hard on his aim he hardly hears himself asking, "Aren't you gonna do the same?"

The muzzle of Bass's Desert Eagle lowers, incrementally, and the whole world shifts under Miles' boots. Bass speaks again, but this time, it's that soft, gravelly voice that sets all the alarm bells in Miles' head buzzing: "No. I'm not gonna hurt you, Miles." What is this? A con? His hallucinations come true?

He can't help but follow the gun with his eyes, giving plenty of opportunity in his distraction for his best friend to put a couple rounds in his chest, but Bass just spreads his arms out wide, pistol held loosely in one hand.

"Put your gun down." Like hell. This is some sort of trick. He raises his eyes again to his target - to his friend, to his enemy, and _dammit_ , Bass is walking toward him now, arms still held wide.

Holy fucking hell. Half of him wants to run to Bass and hug him till he can't breathe, but all the other half can think is, _He's a liar, liar, liar…_ And he has about three seconds to decide which half to believe before Bass'll be close enough to grab for his gun.

He's too tired for games, so when he speaks, Miles voices what he's actually thinking: "What are you doing?"

And the answer throws his off-kilter world into a full blown spin. "I'm not gonna shoot you. I want you to come back." Bass edges a step toward him, raising one hand as if to stay Miles' shot.

"You want me to _what_?" If he couldn't keep his hands steady before, they're a fucking flea circus now. He's as liable to shoot himself in the foot as shoot Bass. Bass takes another step forward, and Miles slides sideways and back, starting a slow circling pattern, trying to give himself some space to think.

Bass is still talking, always talking, that smooth voice that rolls truth and lies into one seamless package: "We look out for each other; that's what we do. Even when the other one screws up. I forgive you - okay? I forgive you. You come back, I'll let your family live. I'll give you whatever you want."

He's seen Bass use this exact same technique a hundred times on a hundred different prisoners: establish rapport, put them in your debt, remind them of your power with a backhanded threat, offer them the world on a platter if they join your cause. Miles' eyes harden.

And then Bass breaks script.

"It was better; it was…simpler, with you here." His voice wavers, and his eyes shine with something like desperation. And in those eyes, for just a second, Miles sees the little kid, the best friend, the _brother_ who'd never left his side, who'd worshipped the ground he walked on.

Then the last word Miles expects comes out of Bass's mouth: "Please?"

The gun clatters to the ground, and Miles flinches like he's been shot. Bass steps closer again, unarmed now, eyes never leaving Miles. Miles is so distracted he hardly realizes they're still circling until his right foot bumps against Bass's discarded pistol.

He glances down at the gun, then up at Bass over the scope of the rifle. Bass has always read him better than most, and he must see something in Miles' eyes now, because he almost, _almost_ looks relieved when he says, "Now, you tried to kill me once before, and you couldn't pull the trigger."

Miles flashes back instantly to that moment - the gun buried in the back of blond curls, Bass's whispered "Why?" - and for a second, he's there and here at the same time, holding a pistol to the back of Bass's head and pointing a rifle at his chest. He'd thought it would be easier, somehow, looking Bass in the eyes. He'd thought he would see how far gone he was, see the monster instead of the man.

He'd been wrong.

**...**

Bass had been wrong. Oh, shit - he'd been wrong. When he'd seen Miles round that corner, for just a split second, he'd actually expected him to lower his rifle, grin, jog up and clap him on the back with a "Gotcha!"

Then he'd seen Rachel behind Miles and that hard look in Miles' eyes, and he'd processed it all just fast enough to dive for cover as Miles mowed down the soldiers in front of him. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

He knows he'll have to talk his way out. Sure, they could have a bloody shootout, but they both know the odds are pretty even they'll both end up dead once the shooting starts. And Bass hasn't ever been able to compete with Miles in a fair fight, not since they were kids. So he falls back on what he's always been good with: words.

As he steps from cover, leveling his pistol at Miles' chest more for insurance than anything else, he can see that Miles, for all that his hands are shaking, has already made up his mind, and Bass pushes to the back of his own the voice that's looping: _He didn't come back for you. It wasn't a con. You were wrong. You were wrong. You were wrong._

He's got to keep Miles talking. At least talking long enough for Jeremy to bust through the door behind him and blow his best friend to hell.

So he talks. He spins lies and drops veiled threats and pushes and twists and turns the words to his advantage, pulling at everything he knows will put Miles off kilter; will make him hesitate. And if these are his final moments, then this speech is Bass's magnum opus - a masterpiece of manipulation so convincing that Bass actually feels the words start to catch in his own throat as he stares at Miles through burning, blurred eyes.

And then the next words come unbidden: "It was better; it was…simpler, with you here," and his goddamned voice is _shaking_ because there's too much truth mixed in that lie, but he's a fucking genius at this, because he sees real doubt surface for the first time in Miles' eyes.

Softly, because he's got Miles on a knife edge and he's afraid to break the moment, and - if he's honest - because all the rest of his carefully planned words have fled him, Bass whispers, "Please?"

Then, as if of its own accord, his hand opens, and his gun clatters to the ground. Miles flinches. Bass opens his arms wide, staring at Miles through red-rimmed eyes.

Holy fucking goddamned shit. What in fuck's name is he doing? He's taken the con too far, and Miles is going to blow his fucking head off. Panic claws at his skin, and Bass's whole body tenses like someone's twisted a spring between his shoulders. He grabs at his words to shield himself, and the rest of his artful speech comes flooding back to him, along with a profound sense of relief. Miles hasn't shot him yet - why is that? - and now he has his words back; has control.

"Now, you tried to kill me once before, and you couldn't pull the trigger." Their slow circling has brought them 180 degrees from their starting points, meaning that the door Jeremy is about to blow through is now directly behind Miles. Which means Bass has probably less than a minute to get Miles to drop his rifle before all hell breaks loose and one or both of them dies.

He's still speaking, creeping forward, backing Miles incrementally toward the door. "I understand that now; I couldn't do it either if I were you." He wonders if that's actually true. Bass pauses, eyeing Miles searchingly over the rifle barrel - there's that flash of doubt again in his friend's eyes. This is poker, and that was Miles' tell. Bass plays his last card:

"And I don't think you're going to pull it now." He really hopes that's true. Real fear flashes in his eyes before he can stop it. Miles tenses, raises the rifle a half-inch. Bass just holds his position, arms raised, one hand reaching forward slightly as if to ward off an attack.

Then Miles blinks, suddenly and rapidly, like he's clearing a fog from his thoughts. His eyes soften, and Bass feel the flood of relief turning his muscles to jelly even before Miles' rifle lowers to his side.

"I'm sorry." The words catch Bass by surprise. Not because Miles bought the con - it had been his best work of manipulation ever, perfectly executed - but because of the way his gut twists when Miles says them.

Miles bends down and sets the rifle carefully on the ground next to the body of a dead soldier. He looks at the dead man for a moment, then around at the four other bodies, as if seeing them for the first time.

Bass can't move. He's shaking with relief and residual adrenaline, flooded with more than he ought to be able to feel at once. It's looking, impossibly, like his ploy had worked better than he'd ever expected - like he's gotten Miles back. _He's got him back._ Of course, there'll be some objections, and a hell of a lot to work out - like how to keep Jeremy from shooting Miles on sight - but -

Shit, Jeremy. Bass flicks a glance at the door behind Miles. And hears the sound of approaching boot steps. Bass reaches for his words.

"Miles…" is the only one he can find.

Miles, still crouching next to the dead soldier, lays his hand on the man's back. The sound of running soldiers has got to be loud enough for him to hear by now. He bows his head, dark hair hanging over his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says again. It comes out softer, more broken.

Then, in one motion, Miles pulls the sidearm from the dead man's holster, levels it at Bass, and fires.

The door behind Miles flies open just as pain explodes in Bass's left leg, halfway between knee and ankle. He can't actually hear the bone break over the report of the 9mm and the shouts of Jeremy's soldiers, but he sure as hell feels it. His vision goes blindingly white, and the spots clear just long enough for him to see Miles grab the rifle in one hand, strafing enough bullets across the doorway to make Jeremy and his men dive for cover. Then he feels Miles' shoulder slide under his arm, an arm wrap around his back, and then nothing.


	3. Combustion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is up much faster than my usual once a week (or once every two or three weeks…) posting schedule, and thanks for that go to buttercups3, whose extremely prompt review after my three-week hiatus from posting prompted me to hurry the next update up a bit, and virgobeauty30, who didn't want to be left hanging and asked for a new chapter ASAP. This is as ASAP as it gets with me, folks. :-) If you see any errors, please be kind enough to let me know. I edited a LOT faster than usual. Also, it's really sort of half a chapter, since otherwise it would have been CRAZY long. Next half coming soon, from Charlie's POV!
> 
> Disclaimer: Still not mine, no matter how much of it I write. Also still making 0% money but having 100% fun.

__Combustion_ _

_**com·bus·tion** _   
_/kəmˈbəsCHən/_

_Noun_   
_**1.** The process of burning something: "the combustion of fossil fuels"._   
_**2.** Rapid chemical combination of a substance with oxygen, producing heat and light._

_\- Google Dictionary  
_

Miles reflects, as he slogs across the power plant courtyard carrying his rifle in his right hand with an unconscious and surprisingly heavy Bass slung across his left shoulder, that maybe this isn't his best plan ever. He's tired, his shoulder hurts like hell, and it's nearly impossible to watch for threats, aim the rifle, and make a convincing show of threatening his unconscious hostage so that none of the Militia soldiers get cocky about rushing him.

Or hell, maybe he's just old and out of shape. Although if he'd been planning on picking a hostage in the first place, he really couldn't have made a better choice. Whether or not any of these soldiers actually like Bass, it's clear that they're all scared to death of what might happen to them if they're either directly or indirectly responsible for his death.

Jeremy and the twelve men with him - dammit, that's way more than the three he'd busted into the hallway with - are still following at a distance - a much closer distance than Miles would prefer - and he shifts to keep Bass's body between himself and any overly ambitious marksmen.

There's smoke and rubble at the wall by the side gate, and Miles feels the corner of his mouth turn up a little at that. Aaron Pittman might be next to useless in combat, but the ex-computer nerd had less give up in him than a lot of soldiers Miles had trained. Miles grunts, shifts Bass's dead weight a little farther across his back, and jogs toward the exit. He hears a couple of shouts from men near the wall, but there's an angry answering shout from Jeremy and no bullets come flying his way.

Which is just as well, because he'll fall flat on his face if he has to try to dodge anything right now.

The wall looms ahead of him, dust and smoke still rising from the rubble, and Miles has one hairy moment where he has to let go of the rifle and leave it slung over his shoulder to navigate a tricky patch. He looks over his shoulder and hisses out a short sigh of relief: the dust and smoke make enough of a screen to hide him from Jeremy and the soldiers.

Using both hands, he hauls Bass the last two feet out of the rubble - and nearly runs into Charlie, whose open-mouthed grin morphs into an even more open-mouthed expression of shock as she catches sight of Bass's body.

"Is that - ?"

"Yep," Miles grunts, jogging past and grabbing Charlie's arm to move her along.

"Is he - ?" She looks over at him as they move to catch up with the others, her blue eyes widening.

"Nope."

"What happened to him?"

"Me," Miles snaps, throwing a shoulder to shift Bass's weight. Maybe Charlie can carry on a conversation in full sentences while running and dodging obstacles, but she's twenty years younger than Miles, and she's also not carrying an extra hundred and eighty pounds. Miles spares a glance from the ground to check on the others - and comes to an abrupt stop as he nearly runs into Rachel, Danny, Nora, and Aaron, who have _all_ turned toward him with the same open-mouthed stare.

It takes him a second and a half to realize that none of them are looking at him. Then he hears a high-pitched whine that rises in the air and up the back of his spine to the base of his brain, where it triggers a whole host of very visceral memories. He turns as the whine becomes a mechanical thrum, splitting the air in a rhythmic _chop-chop-chop-chop-chop-chop-chop-chop_.

And from behind the power plant wall, a Huey labors into view, hovering ponderously for a few seconds, thirty feet in the air, before dipping its nose and angling straight toward them.

 _Fifteen years_. _Fifteen years_ since anything manmade flew the skies, and the first thing up there has a big black "M" painted on the nose.

Eight years ago, Miles would have been proud.

Now, he's just really, really tired.

"Get down!" he roars over the whirl of the rotors. "Behind me! _Now_!" He grabs Charlie, the only one standing close enough, and throws her to the ground behind him. Then he draws his sword with his right hand and slides Bass's unconscious form off his shoulder - _watch the leg_ \- catching him with his left arm under Bass's left shoulder. The others have gathered behind him by the time he snakes his left hand up, grabs the back of Bass's hair, pulls his friend's head back, and raises his sword to his neck.

The helicopter just hovers thirty feet above them, waiting. Hopefully, there's someone up there who knows him, who will know better than to call his bluff. And hopefully, it's not Jeremy, because Jeremy _would_ call his bluff. He spares a glance over his shoulder to make sure everyone's still there.

Aaron, Danny and Charlie, and Nora are all looking at the chopper with almost identical expressions of mixed wonder and terror. Well, actually, _Nora's_ looking at the chopper like she wants to blow it up.

And Rachel...is looking at him. They lock eyes for half a second -

\- and Miles tears his away at the rattle of the Huey's minigun. He raises the sword a little higher, planting his feet and making his threat abundantly clear.

The wind from the helicopter's blades whips Miles' hair into his eyes and flattens the grass around his little group as it descends another ten feet. Nora catches his eye with a question, angling her right shoulder and lifting the bomb. Miles holds her gaze - _wait_ \- and suddenly, the Huey banks around and buzzes back off toward the power plant, leaving the seven of them alone in the field.

In the wake of the chopper's rotor noise, silence falls.

Rachel breaks it.

"What the _hell_ , Miles?"


	4. Combustion (pt. 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, Charlie's POV gives me a headache. Also, large ensemble casts are HARD. On the fun side, the chapter name should make more sense by the time you get to the tension-laden reveals at the end of this chapter. Have fun!
> 
> Disclaimer: Still not mine. Revolution, the Mathesons, the English language - none of them originated with me, and I only make money off the third sometimes, though definitely not with this story. ;-

_Combustion (pt. 2)_

Charlie Matheson hoists herself out of the flattened grass, smiling like an idiot. She can't help it - they've actually done it! They had walked straight into the Monroe Militia's capitol city, had gotten Danny back, and had walked - okay, run - right back out again, safe and sound.

And to top that off, the sound of that helicopter is still vibrating in her ears, a steady beat of terror and exhilaration and incredible possibilities, because even though Monroe has it right now, the world's got power back - power! Charlie can only just remember what it was like to ride in a car, and she'd only ever been in a plane the one time when she was four, to visit a great aunt in Miami, but the rumble of the helicopter's engine just now had filled her with a dizzying elation. Because if _that_ was possible, _anything_ was.

She whirls around, glancing at Nora, who's shoving what looks like a bomb back into her bag; at Aaron, who's offering Danny a hand up out of the grass; and at Miles - she grins - who's studiously ignoring her mothe - Rachel - Rachel's last question.

"What the hell, Miles?" Rachel repeats, much softer, but with no less accusation. Miles still ignores her, and Charlie can feel the tension rise between them from several feet away.

"Aaron, give me a hand here." Miles' voice sounds pained and tired. Charlie glances up at him, noticing for the first time all day how exhausted her uncle looks. He's actually wavering on his feet, and it looks like his hold on Monroe might be slipping.

Charlie jumps forward, brushing past Rachel, and steps to the other side of Monroe, throwing her whole body into the effort to help Miles shoulder the weight. Miles spares a quick glance at her over Monroe's blond curls as she grunts with the effort of supporting him - jeez, this guy is heavier than he looks - then seems to accept her help as an inevitability, sighs, and gives that little head shake that Charlie's come to read as "your funeral, kid." But she catches a hint of a smile as he turns his head away.

"All right, come on. We've got to move some place safer than this."

Nora takes point without a word, while Danny falls in on Charlie's left side and Aaron and Rachel bring up the rear. It's slow going, and Charlie finds her back and shoulders aching before they even make it to the woods.

Aaron and Rachel are whispering furiously behind them, but she can't spare the energy to turn her head to catch what they're saying. She glances over at her uncle instead - he looks as serious as she's ever seen him, which is saying something.

They march for a mile at a pace that takes every drop of Charlie's focus and energy to maintain, yet she can tell that Miles is impatient and desperate to move faster. Every time she slows or stumbles and he looks over at her, jaw set, and slows his own pace, she feels a twinge of guilt for not being able to keep up.

She's so busy looking at her feet to keep her balance that she hardly notices when they step out of the woods into a large, overgrown clearing. Nora comes jogging back to meet them and Miles jerks his head from her to Charlie. Without a word, Nora takes Charlie's place, slipping her arm under Monroe's shoulder and gently pushing Charlie out of the way. Charlie feels a little lightheaded as the weight suddenly leaves her shoulders.

"It's clear," Nora mutters to Miles.

Charlie looks up, rubbing her aching lower back with both hands. A soaring, red-roofed glass atrium - with most of the windows broken - rises out of the landscape of broken blacktop and tall crab grass ahead of them. Adjoining structures connect to the atrium on both sides, extending into the edges of the surrounding woods and past Charlie's range of vision. Abandoned cars litter the clearing around the atrium, rusting away, with weeds growing around their tires and through broken windows.

"Is that a mall?" Aaron picks his way over the blacktop and weeds, clearing his glasses on his shirt before looking up at the atrium.

"Willow Grove Park Mall," Nora answers, grunting as she shifts Bass's weight on her shoulders. Charlie's back feels a pang of sympathy as Nora continues, "Stripped clean and then abandoned by the Militia as 'indefensible.'"

"Which is why we like it," Miles says as they move toward the atrium. "Lots of entrances and exits."

Danny speaks up for the first time since leaving the power plant. "So, we'll be safe here?"

"No." Charlie, Nora and Miles all speak at the same time. Danny looks at his feet, hunching his shoulders, and opens his mouth like he's going to apologize for asking a stupid question. Was that how she'd looked her first week around Uncle Miles? Probably not - she'd always hidden her discomfort better than Danny - but it'd definitely been how she'd felt. And Miles and Nora together - Miles was intimidating enough all on his own. Poor Danny probably felt like disappearing into the ground.

"We won't be safe here," she elaborates, "but it'll be easy to run away from here, because the Militia will have trouble covering all the exits, right?"

She looks at Nora for confirmation; Nora nods.

"Great," Danny mutters, like it's not.

They move into the atrium together. Rachel and Danny hold open the doors while Aaron, Miles, Nora, and Charlie tag team the effort of moving Monroe's body over the rubble without dropping or further injuring him.

Monroe's left pant leg is sticky with blood - Miles still hasn't said how that'd happened, or why he'd brought Monroe with them in the first place. He'd just had that "don't argue with me" look on his face that Charlie had learned better than to defy. So she tries to avoid the blood and whatever injury might be underneath it as she helps lay the President of the Monroe Republic on the atrium's tile floor.

All six of them pause then and actually look around them. An enormous antique carousel takes up more than half the atrium, its collection of painted ponies frozen mid-prance and covered in a thick layer of dust, their carved manes and arched necks criss-crossed with cracks and termite holes.

She'd ridden a carousel, once, when she was five and her mom had taken her to the zoo to meet a friend - a blond-haired man - on a Saturday while her dad was working. Her mom sat on a bench with the blond-haired man and watched Charlie go round and round and round. She got to ride the carousel as many times as she wanted, but they never smiled when Charlie waved at them as she passed.

Rachel's voice snaps her out of her memories. "You should have left him at the plant, Miles." She stands over Miles, who's crouched next to Monroe, checking his vital signs.

Miles tears Monroe's left pant leg open from ankle to knee, then rummages in his pack and pulls out an old shirt, a flask, and his water. "Don't be an idiot. He's the only thing that kept that chopper from mowing us down. Aaron, I need Maggie's med kit."

Aaron nods a little too fast and scrambles to pull the med kit from his bag.

"Now they'll have the whole Militia out looking for us…" Rachel looks out through the cracked windows as if she expects to see the soldiers descending on them right now.

"You think that wouldn't have happened anyway?" Miles soaks a sleeve of the old shirt in water and uses it to wipe most of the blood off Monroe's leg, revealing a small hole that seeps blood slowly from the edges. " _Med kit_ , Aaron."

"Trying." Aaron finally drops the pack on the ground, dumping its entire contents onto the tile floor.

"Give me some credit, Rachel. I know how to use a hostage." There's a twist of bitterness to his words, and Rachel flinches, just enough for Charlie to notice. "Jeremy knows I'll slit his throat if I see so much as one scout following us."

Aaron hands the med kit to Miles, who snatches it from his hand and pops the latch with two fingers. He pulls out a pair of tweezers and a mirror, which he tosses to Nora. "Light."

Nora kneels next to Miles and angles the mirror until it reflects as much daylight as possible into Monroe's wound. Charlie's seen it in fights before, but the way they work together so seamlessly is fascinating -

\- until Miles pushes the tweezers deep into the oozing puncture wound, and Charlie spins away, fighting back a wave of nausea.

"And if your plan gets us all killed?" Rachel's voice comes from behind her.

"My plan got us halfway across the country, into fucking Philadelphia, rescued your sorry asses, and got us all out safe." The hard edge in Miles' voice turns to open anger. "If you don't like it, you can go back to your cell."

"The cell _you_ put me in?"

Charlie spins around, all the breath leaving her lungs. _What_? What had she said? Her mother had disappeared on a foraging trip. When Rachel had turned up as Monroe's captive, she'd assumed…and suddenly, she understands that thing her dad had always said about the word "assumed."

Rachel's eyes flash as she stands over Miles, who still has his back to her - and Uncle Miles, Charlie realizes, is holding completely, deathly still. Like Rachel's hit a nerve.

Like she's spoken the truth.

He doesn't turn around, doesn't even seem to breathe, and neither can Charlie, waiting for his answer. But when his voice comes again, it's very, very quiet.

And very, very dangerous. "I don't have time for this, Rachel. Help, or get out."

Rachel doesn't move. Her voice softens until it's almost timid. "So, you lied to them, too."

Miles ignores her, grabbing Nora's hand to re-angle the mirror and reaching with the tweezers again.

"Eight years," Rachel murmurs, "and you haven't changed at all."

Miles is on his feet before Charlie can register what's happening. He takes three quick steps toward Rachel, backing her into a corner, and slamming his hand against the wall behind her. The _boom_ echoes through the atrium as Miles roars, "GET OUT!"

 _Mom_. " _Miles_!" Charlie hardly realizes she's shouted until Miles turns his head; she catches a flash of something dark in his eyes before they go flat and impossible to read. Then Miles is gone as quickly as he'd come, kneeling back at Monroe's side.

Charlie tries to find her voice. She wants to lay into Miles, shout at him until she's hoarse, ask him what the hell her mom means by "the cell _you_ put me in," but her eyes and throat are burning and she just can't form the words. Nora looks up and catches her eye with a clear _leave it_.

And then, from the floor, there's a low groan, a muffled, "Shit," from Miles and everyone, even Rachel, turns to look.

Because Sebastian Monroe is awake.


	5. Idle

_Idle_

Losing consciousness is always a strange experience. One time, Bass had blacked out in a bar and woken up in the backseat of a stranger's car. Twice - once before the Blackout and once after - he'd been wounded in combat, lost consciousness, and woken up on a field hospital operating table. Once, he'd been tossed off a friend's motorcycle, landed, passed out, and woken up ten seconds later as his friend was prepping to perform CPR.

But strangely, no matter how long Bass'd been out for, he'd always snapped back to consciousness one hundred percent alert. It had just felt like blinking and ending up somewhere else.

This time, he wakes to…a winged horse.

…What the fuck?

He blinks and scans the room, which is already in focus. That's a carousel in front of him. Where the hell had they - never mind, not vital right now. There are five - no, six - other people in the room: Miles is on his left, kneeling next to his leg - SHIT that hurts shit shit _shit_ \- _FOCUS_ \- okay, Nora Clayton - that's definitely Nora Clayton kneeling beside Miles, and in the background, the two Matheson kids, the chunky guy - Aaron - and against the wall, eyes trying to burn a hole in his chest bigger than the one in his leg: Rachel. If she's here, he's probably screwed.

Miles is muttering something to Nora - Bass catches "traction" and "hold him" - and then white light bursts behind his eyes and he wishes he'd just black out again because _fuck_ that hurts. That must be Miles, setting the break in his leg. Fanfuckingtastic. He'd really been hoping he'd been wrong about it being broken. When his vision goes back to normal, Bass croaks, "You don't look sorry."

"What?" Miles gets more terse the angrier he is, and Bass knows him well enough to tell that he's about half a step from homicidal right now.

So of course, he pushes him. "Said you were sorry," he says, forcing a tense grin. "Then you shot me." He pauses, partly for dramatic effect, partly because Clayton's rigging up some kind of splint for his leg and he can either breathe or talk, but not both. Miles doesn't reply for a second, and Bass is suddenly worried that he won't be able to draw him into any banter. Banter is what keeps him alive.

Finally, Miles speaks. "Had to shoot you. Needed a hostage."

"Yeah? Well, you can't aim for shit, Miles. If you'd shot me in the fucking arm, I could have walked out of there with you."

"Yeah, and if I'd shot you in the head, I'd have a lot less chatter to deal with right now." Miles gives a particularly hard tug on the strip of cloth he's tying around the splint. Bass hisses through his teeth, grinning, because now Miles is talking in longer sentences. And that's good.

The first time Miles had ever been really and truly mad at him had been the summer they were eighteen, and Bass had banged some girl that Miles had liked. The girl had had absolutely zero interest in Miles, but it had violated the spirit of some unspoken agreement between the two of them, which Bass had only realized after the fact. He'd apologized fifteen ways to Sunday, but Miles had still hardly spoken two words to him in a week.

They'd made up eventually - three weeks, eight beers and a fistfight later - and Miles had resumed talking to him in full sentences, but the whole thing had shaken Bass in a way he'd hardly cared to admit. Over the subsequent years, Miles had razzed him about the endless stream of bimbos Bass dated, but truth be told, he'd just been trying like hell to stay away from any girl in whom Miles might've been remotely interested.

It'd worked, too, for a long time. The next time they'd fought over a girl had been almost ten years later, and she'd almost destroyed their friendship.

Hell, maybe she had.

…

"Yeah, and if I'd shot you in the head, I'd have a lot less chatter to deal with right now." Miles jerks the knot he's tying a little harder than strictly necessary, ignoring Bass's hiss of pain.

So, what the hell now? They can't stay here long, but he's been running on pure instinct and adrenaline for the last 48 hours, and now that all of that's drained out his boot soles, he's poor for ideas. And he's halfway-to-unconscious exhausted.

He tugs the last strip of cloth tight around Bass's splinted leg and stands, sliding his sword belt back into place and glancing out the broken windows at the parking lot.

"What's your plan here, Miles?" Leave it to Bass to cut right to the point of conflict. "'Cause you know Neville hates you, and Jeremy actually offered to shoot you for me…"

 _Jeremy_? Really? Miles looks away, grinding his teeth. Jeremy'd been the one he'd hoped to negotiate with, but apparently he'd trained him, like everyone else, too well. Deserters got shot. No exceptions. Not even for the man who'd saved your life.

Shit. He runs a hand through his hair, realizes how much that gesture looks like Bass, then twists his rifle around on its shoulder strap so he can check the clip, mostly to give his hands something else to do.

For the first time since leaving the power plant, Miles looks - actually looks - at the people he's leading.

Aaron, back turned, is repacking his backpack in silence - but his hands are shaking. Danny has dropped to the floor, leaning his back against the base of the carousel. The kid looks dazed, exhausted, and more than a little beaten up, but he'll recover. Nora - beautiful, dependable Nora - is checking exits methodically, making sure no one's sneaking up on them and that they have an escape route available. Charlie hasn't moved since he yelled at her mother. He can't read the expression on her face, and he's pretty sure he doesn't want to.

Bass is smirking up at him, hair plastered, breathing shallow and pained, and for a second, Miles would give anything to be in his head. Bass'd always been better at reading people than him, and right now, he's staring across the room at Rachel.

Rachel, who hasn't taken one step from the corner. Miles risks a glance, and accidentally locks eyes with her - and of course, he _can_ read the expression on her face, because he's seen it before.

He'd seen it in the spring of 2019, when she'd first realized that he and Bass had no intention of letting her return home to her family. He'd seen it ten years earlier, two days before Christmas, 2009, when he'd stood on the doorstep of Ben and Rachel's house, bags in hand, and she'd asked him to spend Christmas someplace else.

And he'd seen it almost exactly two years before that, on November 8th, 2007, sitting across a couch from Rachel with Charlie asleep two rooms away - he'd seen that same expression flicker in Rachel's eyes just a second before he'd leaned in and kissed her.

Then, he hadn't known what it meant.

Now, he knows it so well he doesn't need to put a word to it. It's just a feeling: a twist of the gut, a skipped heartbeat, a sick, stomach-dropping plunge, a wave of dark despair. He stands rooted to the spot, letting the storm break over him. In the end, it's just an echo - something he used to feel that should have faded with time - and probably would have, if he hadn't kept finding new ways to twist the knife.

Only Bass should be able to see the way he's standing very, very still, but suddenly, there's a hand on his shoulder - Nora's, and how had he not heard her coming? - and a soft voice with an edge of playful sarcasm: "They don't have the boots I was looking for. Can we try another mall?"

And he's so tired, and so wrung out, that he laughs in spite of himself. It's not even a particularly funny joke. But it's something to laugh at, and he loves Nora for that.

For that, and for being the only one not scared shitless of him.

A voice croaks from the floor: "If you're not gonna take me back, can I at least get some bread and water or something? We're ten feet from a food court, and you haven't offered your hostage any McDonald's. That's bad manners, man."

Okay, maybe there are two people who aren't scared shitless of him.


	6. Wheels

_Wheels_

The post-Blackout world never hands you exactly what you want, but what most people don't realize is that it does hand you enough to be happy, if you pay attention.

And Nora Clayton has learned to pay attention.

As she looks around at their ragtag group - Miles, standing in the midst of a family he thought he'd never see again; Rachel, reunited with her two children; Charlie and Danny, together again against all odds, not only with each other, but also with their dead mother; Aaron, alive and with a spark in his eyes she'd bet hadn't been there before this journey - a wide smile creeps onto her face. Monroe and his Militia can throw themselves off a bridge, because this is power, right here: in the connections between people, in simple character tested against insane circumstances.

It's something she'd almost forgotten - actually, before she'd met Charlie. But over the last several months, she'd seen Charlie be selfless when she'd lost everything and everyone she cared about. She'd seen Charlie show mercy to people who would show her none. She'd seen Charlie… _be_. And in Charlie, she'd seen what she'd wanted to be.

And then there'd been Miles. Charlie had melted Miles, and underneath, Nora had seen a side of him that she'd always known was there but had never been able to unearth.

She loves Charlie for that.

Of course, right now, Miles is back to his usual asshole self.

Which is why it's great that Nora's skill set includes defusing bombs.

"Charlie," she calls, as Miles is still laughing, "Come on. I could use you to help scout a way out of here."

Charlie snaps out of her paralysis and starts toward her, checking on Danny over her shoulder as she moves. She probably doesn't even realize consciously that she's doing it. That girl must have looked out for him his whole life. Nora feels a twinge of something in her chest as Mia flits unbidden into her mind, but she pushes the thought away. As far as she's concerned, this - these people - are her family now. So it's partly her job to protect them.

Miles shoots her a look that's a clear question.

"I have friends in Levittown," she says quietly. "It's only twenty miles. If we steal a wagon…"

"Rebel friends?" Something about the way Miles spits out the word "rebel" raises Nora's hackles.

" _Friend_ friends…does it matter?" she snaps.

Miles jerks his chin at Bass, who has - thank God - finally lapsed into silence, then lowers his voice. "Rebels'll shoot him on sight."

Ah. So he's not just being a stubborn ass. She feels a tiny pang of guilt - really tiny - for snapping at him. "Not if they don't know who he is. Think about it, Miles - how many people recognize you? There are no pictures of Sebastian Monroe. What do they have to go on? Height, build, hair? One of those we can change, and honestly, really think about this: Who's going to think we're actually crazy enough to have _kidnapped_ the _President of the Monroe Republic_?"

Miles sets his jaw, and for a minute, Nora thinks he's going to refuse. Then he says, "There's a supply depot a mile and a half away at the country club. They'll have a wagon."

Nora grins. "I"ll go. With Charlie and Aaron."

Miles frowns; she can see the muscles bunch along his not quite clean shaven jaw.

Nora busies herself opening her backpack and rifling through her bomb kit. She tucks a stray strand of her wavy hair behind her ear as she matter-of-factly shoots back, "You _can't_ go. Gotta keep an eye on the hostage. Charlie's good with that crossbow, and Aaron's getting pretty decent at explosions. Plus," she continues, her tone devilishly sweet, "you stole the last one."

Miles sighs through his nose, left hand hooking in his sword belt, right hand reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "Fine," he finally says, like it's not. "But we are."

Nora glances up from her backpack, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

Miles mutters his response under his breath, but it sounds like "Actually crazy."

Nora's grin just widens. Crazy is where she does her best work.

Charlie and Aaron trail after her for a mile and a quarter in admirable silence - apart from Aaron's uncanny ability to step on every dry, crackling branch. They cut through the woods for the first mile, then follow the edge of a cleared road for another quarter until, still a quarter mile from the supply depot, Nora raises her hand to call a halt.

The sound of horse hooves and wagon wheels echoes through the trees, and she, Aaron, and Charlie drop flat immediately. Nora and Charlie crawl forward on their bellies toward the road, while Aaron - wisely - stays put.

A few seconds later, an empty Militia supply wagon rounds the nearest bend in the road, attended only by the driver and two Militia soldiers on horseback. Well, she's never been much for planning. (That'd driven her mother crazy, especially when she'd completely winged her act for her first big pageant…and won).

She grabs Charlie by the shoulder and stares straight into her eyes. "The second that wagon stops, shoot all three of them. Start with the two on horseback - closer one first."

Charlie blinks, which is good enough for Nora. She drops her rifle and bomb kit, sneaks as quickly and quietly as she can about thirty feet away from Charlie's position, and then sprints down the hill, crashing loudly through the underbrush, shouting in her best panicked voice, "Help! Help me!"

Who is she kidding? She dodges tangles of blackberry and downed branches like a deer, placing each foot with the assurance of someone who's spent the better part of her adult life living in the woods. She'll be lucky if the two guards don't shoot her on sight. She leaps to clear a log on the side of the road, misjudges slightly, catches her toe, and lands sprawling in the road ten feet in front of the advancing wagon, which actually probably helps her panicked image. It also knocks all the wind out of her lungs. She's dimly aware of the nearest guard's horse spooking backward, a shout from the driver, and the sound of wagon wheels grinding to a halt. When finally she rolls onto her back and looks up, the two wagon horses loom almost directly above her. One of them reaches its nose toward her and snorts nervously; at that distance, the sound is enough to make Nora jump and roll away.

She rises slowly to a sitting position, favoring her left side as if she's injured it in the fall. It rarely hurts to look helpless. Her hair has come half loose from its ponytail and hangs down in front of her face. She peers through the wavy curtain, coiled, ready to move as soon as Charlie fires her first crossbow bolt.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" The nearest guard has gotten his horse back under control and where the hell is Charlie with her crossbow? She'd said, "the second that wagon stops" - she'd looked her right in the eye and said it - and the wagon's been stopped now for a good three seconds and _where the hell is Charlie_ -

The guard points a sidearm at her. It never fails to amaze Nora the way having a gun pointed at you narrows your focus.

The guard's knuckles, cracked and tanned to leather by the sun, tighten around the pistol.

Then - _finally_ \- Charlie's first crossbow bolt slams into his back, and he pitches forward off his horse. Nora springs for the reins as the horse jumps back and to the side, slamming his shoulder into the nearer of the two wagon horses. The driver shouts and slaps the driving reins against the horses' rumps and the wagon lurches forward just as Nora leaps out of the way. The second guard falls from his horse and she hears a crash as Charlie sprints down the hill, loading another bolt and taking aim at the driver -

\- but it's too late, and the shot's too long, and Nora only hesitates a second before gathering up the reins of the horse she's caught, planting her hand in the mane, and scrambling into the saddle. The horse takes off running before she's got her leg fully over its back, but her other hand finds purchase on the horn and she hauls herself into the saddle at a full gallop.

She catches up to the wagon easily, but her horse darts sideways - and dammit, she hates horses - as she reaches for the wagon horse's bridle, and then she hears the _schk-schk_ of a shotgun round being chambered and throws herself to the side just in time.

A boom, and the shotgun blast rockets past her right ear, setting it ringing. Her horse swerves, her grip slips, and she can see every pebble on the ground in front of her as she begins to tumble -

\- and then an explosion - bright and hot and the kind of LOUD you can feel - goes up in front of her. The horses rear, the driver screams, and then the ground slams into her and - black.

Her ears are both ringing when she comes to. She moves both arms and legs; rolls onto her side. Nothing broken, but _everything_ hurts, and her neck has seized up. She can move it about an inch to one side, and not at all to the other. Great.

"Nora!" Charlie comes skittering down the embankment next to her, slinging her crossbow over her shoulder as she slides to a halt next to Nora's shoulder.

"M'fine." Nora winces as she forces her head to turn to look at Charlie. She accepts Charlie's offered hand up and looks around at the chaos.

An explosion has ripped open the road directly in front of the wagon. Thankfully, the wagon itself is untouched and the wagon horses appear uninjured. The other two horses have moved off to the side of the road and are cropping nervous mouthfuls of grass in between stepping on their trailing reins. The driver is dead - with Charlie's third crossbow bolt in his back.

"What was that?" Nora points at the charred former road.

"Aaron." Charlie's grin could fit the sky. "He found the bomb in your pack and pitched it like a pro. "

Aaron trundles up, looking sheepish, and holds out Nora's bomb kit, mumbling, "I used to play on my college baseball team."

She looks up, regarding Aaron with a new appreciation. Then she takes her pack from him and slings it onto her back, giving Aaron a congratulatory slap on the shoulder and mostly stifling a yelp of pain as the muscle under her own shoulder blade twinges and contracts. "Good work."

Aaron blushes under his beard.

Charlie and Nora gather up the two loose horses and tie them to the back of the wagon, working fast. Someone will have heard them _blow up a road_ , and Nora would vastly prefer to be halfway to Levittown before every nearby Militia outpost sends a patrol to investigate the noise.

The wagon horses are in good shape, and they make good time back to the Willow Grove mall. The Militia has always taken good care of its horses; honestly, that's probably due to Miles' influence - he has a soft spot for the creatures that Nora has never quite understood. Every time she's ridden, it's been a symphony of spooking, jumping, jigging, and trying to scrape her off on trees.

Miles meets them at the entrance to the atrium, eyes roving quickly over the group, making sure everyone's accounted for, checking for injuries. The action is so habitual that it's reached the level of instinct; she doubts he even knows consciously that he does it. When he's finished, he gives his "good work, soldier" nod and they all fall to work loading the little gear they have, plus their injured hostage.

Monroe looks pale, and he doesn't do much more than grit his teeth as she and Miles heft him into the wagon bed, which can't be a good sign. Nora doesn't know Monroe nearly as well as she knows Miles - they were both scary bastards back in the day, but while Miles had on occasion frightened her, he'd never made her skin crawl in the way Monroe had - but she does know Miles well enough to know that he's hiding how worried he is for his friend.

Hell, she's not sure "friend" is the right word anymore, but six miles later - Aaron driving the wagon and she and Miles riding alongside - as she watches Miles check on Monroe out of the corner of his eye for the four hundred and fifteenth time, she can't think of any other way to describe it.


	7. Catalytic Converter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason, in my head-canon, Jeremy Baker was a high school math teacher before the Blackout. Couldn't find any real canon on it, but if anyone does, lemme know and I'll correct the details accordingly. I'm all about the details. :-D Also, I really wanted to title this chapter, "Look, guys! Villains!" but sadly, it didn't fit with my ongoing "car mechanics" theme.

_Catalytic Converter_

Jeremy Baker has not had a good four hours. He'd spent the first two arguing with Neville about armed and violent pursuit of the Matheson clan - Neville had had absolute murder in his gaze and his fists kept clenching and unclenching spasmodically as he toed the line of outright insubordination in his insistence that Miles had to be caught and killed immediately. He'd come _this far_ from suggesting that Jeremy had let Miles go on purpose, then seemed to realize the clear and present danger of that conversational direction.

Miles must have pissed him off personally. Miles was good at that.

Jeremy, for his part, had held his line - that the rebel cells throughout the Republic would be unnecessarily emboldened by the publicized loss of Sebastian Monroe, that subsequently putting Miles' head on a pike would only make him a martyr and most certainly result in Monroe's death, and that their foremost concern ought to be to ensure that Monroe's absence would not create a power vacuum that could cause potentially devastating infighting and instability during a time when the Militia could ill afford to appear weak. They would of course make it a priority to get General Monroe back, but they would do so quietly, with stealth rather than force.

Neville had visibly controlled himself and responded with a deferential nod and an "Of course."

Jeremy had had him tailed as soon as he'd left the office. He'd known that man long enough to know that Neville was at his most dangerous right after he smiled at you.

Then, he'd spent two more hours putting out fires - making sure any soldiers who'd seen Miles leave with Monroe were silenced (forcibly, if necessary), sending the appropriate sealed instructions to the garrison commanders in the surrounding area. Oh, and _literally_ putting out a small grass fire started by a spark thrown from the helicopter rotors. Maintenance on that thing had been and is going to be heinously complicated, and he still doesn't understand why Monroe had refused to go with something more durable, albeit with a little less shock value.

He's only just sat down when there's a knock on the door of his office. "Come in," he says, trying not to look like he just wants to put his head in his hands and cry.

It's Neville's kid, Jason. Jeremy has always liked him - maybe Jason just reminds him a little of the students he used to teach - but the kid hasn't yet learned that in the post-Blackout world, having a conscience or moral scruples just ensures that you get the shit kicked out of you (or worse) all the faster. In one of life's great ironies, it had been Miles Matheson who'd taught Jeremy that lesson.

Jason stops in front of his desk and salutes. Jeremy salutes back, hopefully looking more enthusiastic about it than he feels. "Corporal?"

Jason drops his salute, and, squaring his shoulders, says, "Report from the supply depot at the country club: Supply wagon WG-19 was attacked an hour ago en route to the depot. Whoever did it blew up a section of road to stop the wagon. The driver and both guards were killed."

"Any witnesses?" Of course, it has to be Miles' work, but Jeremy has to cover his bases. Not doing so leaves you open to being stabbed in the back. Bass had taught him that - in another of life's little ironies.

"No, sir."

"Thank you, Corporal. Dismissed."

Jason turns on his heel and leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.

Jeremy stands and walks to the window, looking out over the courtyard and the ruined section of wall destroyed in the Mathesons' escape. He'd come so close to having a shot at Miles earlier, but never quite close enough to risk it. So he'd had to watch Miles walk out the gate with the last remaining bastion of uncontested leadership the Militia had possessed. Without Bass to keep the others in line, they'll be lucky to last a week without half of high command killing each other.

And Jeremy holds no illusions that he won't be the first to go. He looks over his shoulder, reflexively, before glancing out the window again, and wonders what the hell Miles is planning.

**...**

Jason Neville breathes a soft sigh of relief as the door to Jeremy's office clicks shut behind him.

A short-lived sigh of relief. His father is standing just on the other side of the door, with the gleam in his eye that's always made Jason's heart race with fear.

"Come with me," he says.

Arguing with that voice gets you beaten within an inch of your life. Jason goes.

His dad leads him quickly down a series of corridors with which he's mostly unfamiliar, down several flights of stairs, and out a back entrance to the power plant. They walk, at a pace so brisk it requires Jason to jog occasionally to keep up, all the way past the helipads, through a locked gate - to which he's pretty sure his father isn't supposed to have a key - and into the woods behind the power plant before his dad says another word.

As they reach the woods, his father turns so quickly that Jason nearly runs into him. "You lied to Colonel Baker."

Shit. Jason should have known he'd find out. He always finds out. But there's nothing to do now except play dumb. "Sir?"

His dad's voice drops to that low, patient tone he uses with people he's about to eviscerate. "You left out information from your report, which is the same as lying."

Jason schools his face completely blank. His only chance now is to convince his dad that he actually doesn't know.

"I can only assume one thing here, Jason." His father pauses, then smiles broadly.

Where the hell is this going now? His dad's looking at him like he's waiting for a response. This is always a dangerous game. A misplaced word or a wrong assumption now, and he'll be in more trouble than he's ever been in in his life, including when he'd thrown Charlie off the Militia train. He swallows past a dry throat. "What's that, sir?"

"That you left information out of your report to Colonel Baker because you intended to give that information to me instead."

Jason only just keeps from raising an eyebrow. What his father is suggesting would be outright treason if he was talking about General Monroe, but with Monroe gone, Colonel Baker's right to leadership would only hold as long as no one else made a bid to take over -

\- and his father is making that bid.

And this conversation is him demanding that Jason join him.

By asking a question to which he undoubtedly already knows the answer.

So now, as at most times in his life, Jason is presented with a choice that's not really a choice: lying, in this case, will only hurt him and decidedly not help anyone else. He grinds his teeth, looking his father straight in the eyes, and trying to keep his mouth from twisting bitterly around the words: "The wagon and two horses were tracked to the abandoned Willow Grove Park Mall, where they stopped briefly - presumably to pick up passengers - and then continued along the road headed east, toward Levittown. The tracks are less than two hours old by now."

Just like that, the murderous gleam disappears from his father's eyes. He smiles and claps Jason heartily on the back, letting out a delighted laugh. "That's why I've already put a pursuit detail together. And you'll be riding right beside me. Helping us track." He whistles; a few seconds later, an answering whistle sounds from the woods, and then, one by one, ten men file into the clearing, each one leading a horse. A quick glance reveals that they're all men from his father's company, and the way they look at Major Neville suggests that there's no doubt where their loyalties lie. The first soldier is leading two extra horses; one, he hands to Jason's father, the other, to Jason.

Jason swings into the saddle, feeling his chest and shoulders tighten in foreboding. He's not sure exactly what his father's plan entails, but he's certain that it does not include bringing General Monroe (or anyone else, for that matter) back alive.


	8. Choke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My original author's notes for this chapter say that it was posted on Valentine's Day, which seems appropriate given the level of Bass/Rachel/Miles angst here. Also, as my original note says (and the rest of the story bears out), the language only gets worse from here on out, so if swearing doth offend, watch out.

_Choke_

The wagon ride is hell. Bass grits his teeth and mentally moves "road paving" just below "weapons" on his pendant uses list. He cracks his eyes open again to check his surroundings. Rachel is still sitting next to him in the back of the wagon, and he doesn't think she'd kill him in his sleep, but he's long since given up predicting the lengths to which that woman will go when she sees a threat.

She would've been good in the Marines. Just point her at a target and tell her they wanted to kill her kids: Target ended.

But when he'd brought Rachel into Philly, at Miles' suggestion, he'd never imagined she'd be the catalyst for so many disasters. That woman had done more to bring down the Monroe Republic - and Bass personally - than any other militia, rebel cell, or insurgent in the Republic's history.

Of course, if Bass is right, she'd also done more to bring down the entire _world_ than anyone else in _all_ of history. So by comparison, her having been the tipping point for Miles' departure is a minor infraction.

But Bass still hates her for it.

Nora calls Miles' name sharply, and Bass cracks an eye open again. The dimming twilight narrows his field of vision, but he can see Miles, riding beside the wagon, shake himself and sit up a little straighter, rubbing his eyes with one hand. He looks like shit - and this from the guy with the broken leg. Apparently Nora thinks so, too, because her next words are:

"You've slept two hours in the last thirty-six, Miles. Get in the wagon. I'm not picking you up when you fall off that horse."

A moment later, the wagon grinds to a halt and the wagon bed shifts as Miles puts both hands on the back and vaults up. His weight lands next to Bass a moment later, and by the sound of his breathing, he's out three seconds after he hits the rough boards. Miles has always been able to go superhuman amounts of time without sleep - once during the second Georgia border campaign, he'd stayed awake for six straight days out of pure necessity - but once he does hit the sack, he can sleep like a dead man anywhere. Bass envies that. He hasn't slept well in seventeen years.

Something bumps his shoulder - and there's Charlie Matheson's boot disappearing over the edge of the wagon as she hops out onto Miles' horse. That kid has balls. He would've almost been disappointed if Strausser had had to shoot her. Fuck only knew where she'd gotten them from, either - Ben had always been a coward, and Rachel isn't so much brave as homicidally protective.

But Charlie Matheson _is_ brave, and that's dangerous. He'd seen it in her eyes when she'd jumped in front of Strausser's gun - the kid understands what it means to sacrifice for the greater good; she's just too young and naive to know what the greater good really is. And, like Miles, she's someone people will follow.

Which would make her the perfect poster child for the rebels.

Honestly, Bass'll be a little disappointed if he has to kill her.

Danny's mumbling something to his mother just outside the range of Bass's hearing.

"It's complicated," is Rachel's soft reply. Bass tunes in, straining to catch the details of the conversation, carefully regulating his breathing to appear unconscious.

"Well, Nora says it's going to be a long ride." Awesome. Bass's leg already feels like someone's hitting it repeatedly with an axe.

"Danny…" Rachel sighs. Bass can't risk opening his eyes, but he imagines her nervously tucking a few strands of her blond hair behind her ear. Whatever role she'd played in the Blackout, she's clearly guilty as hell about it, and there's no way she's going to tell her kid -

"Do you know what your Dad and I did for a living? Before the lights went out?"

Bass's heart stops.

And then Rachel keeps right on talking, unrolling the story he'd tried to get out of her for eight years: the story of how she and Ben created a machine that brought about the end of the world.

For an hour, the only sounds in the darkness are the rumble of the wagon wheels, the creaking of the horses' harness, and the soft modulation of Rachel's voice.

No one else speaks a word as she lays out the circumstances surrounding the creation of the machine - the early plans, the assembling of the team, their initial excitement at their groundbreaking discovery - followed by the series of events leading up to its misuse: her pregnancy with Danny, Danny's illness, and the subsequent offer of help from the Department of Defense.

Holy hell.

But Rachel isn't finished. "When Miles - when your uncle called me in, I thought… Well, he knew about the research we'd been doing, about my deal with the DoD, and I just…" Her already soft voice wavers and then disappears into the stillness.

Bass fights to keep his breathing steady. Miles had known. He'd fucking known - he'd _known all along_ that Rachel and Ben, that they'd _caused_ the fucking Blackout, and he'd let Bass _wonder_ for _years_ , wheedling information piece by tiny piece, chasing down whispers of rumors in the far corners of the Republic…and _all along, he'd known exactly what they'd needed_.

And he'd kept it from Bass.

...And suddenly, Bass is thrown back seventeen years to a scene that's still as clear as if he's actually living it.

He's sitting next to Rachel on a park bench in front of a carousel, watching three-year-old Charlie ride the carousel round and round and round while Rachel puts her head in her hands and cries.

Cries, because Miles hasn't spoken to her since Christmas - the Christmas he'd spent getting absolutely shit-faced with Bass after showing up back at base when he was supposed to be in Chicago - cries, because she needs Bass to get a message to Miles and maybe Bass can get through to him, because he always tells Bass everything…

And Bass is sitting there watching her blue eyes spill over with tears - and she's always had such beautiful eyes that he reaches out a hand almost unconsciously toward her face, to wipe the moisture from her cheek - when he realizes what she's saying. His hand stops mid-reach.

"Rachel." He clears his throat and almost can't force the words out, but he has to know. He has to be _sure_. "Did you sleep with Miles?"

And apparently, the question shocks her, because her head snaps up and she looks at him through red-rimmed eyes, startled. "...He didn't tell you?" Her voice comes out as a choked whisper.

Bass finds his feet before he realizes what he's doing, backing away from the bench and Rachel, running a hand compulsively through his hair. "Shit, Rachel. _Shit. How long_?" he says, only half aware that his voice is rising.

"We were together two years, but Bass, I broke it off at Christmas, and oh God, I thought he'd told you - "

"Well, he didn't," Bass snaps, not caring about the way Rachel's eyes immediately well with tears. And then an even worse thought occurs to him. He takes a breath, choking back a sick feeling. "And - " But he actually _can't_ say the words, so he waves a hand helplessly at Rachel's pregnant belly.

"No," she says, quickly. "No; he's Ben's."

Bass is rapidly feeling sicker and sicker, the constant spinning of the carousel in the background mimicking the churning in his stomach. He rocks forward - Rachel needs his support, and he'd come all the way here and she's one of only two people in the world he'd do that for…

But if she'd really needed his support, then _she shouldn't have fucked Miles_. "I - I've gotta go." He barely hears himself mumble the words, his feet still backing away of their own accord.

Rachel raises tortured eyes - and they're still beautiful, and _God_ , he's a fucking idiot because how could he not have _seen_. It'd been Miles who'd warned him away from Rachel in the first place, with some bullshit about Ben being his brother and not wanting Bass screwing up his niece's parents' marriage "just for another one-night fuck."

Miles had to have known it was different with Rachel - had to have known she wasn't like any of the other girls Bass had been with - and yet he'd sat right there and clapped Bass on the shoulder with a "Sorry, man - you've gotta let her go," _when all the while he'd been screwing Rachel himself behind Bass's back_.

"Bass?" Rachel's voice tugs at something in his chest, but he sets his jaw, turns, and walks away from her. As he goes, he catches just a glimpse of Charlie out of the corner of his eye, and she's grinning, still waving at them as she rides the carousel round and round and round and round.

The wagon hits a pothole, and the resulting jolt slams Bass back abruptly into the present. Pain - in every sense of the word - resonates through every part of him, and he can't hold back a groan of misery.

"Here, give him some of this." Aaron passes back a canteen of something from the front of the wagon. A hand - Danny's - holds it to Bass's lips. He takes a swallow. Whiskey. Probably something one of his soldiers confiscated and conveniently forgot to report to the supply depot.

He tips his head back and swallows again; it starts out smooth, soothing the sandpaper feeling on his tongue and the roof of his mouth, then burns like fire all the way down his throat. He's heard Nora compare Miles to whiskey before - although undoubtedly in a much different context - but the parallel is apt:

He'll always burn you in the end.

He'd forgiven Miles years ago for Rachel - they'd put it behind them; been stronger for it - and he'd offered him forgiveness again yesterday, for eight years of absence, eight years of leaving Bass to figure everything out on his own. He'd actually been ready to let him back into the fold, to pick up where they'd left off:

Brothers, for life.

But they'd never really been brothers - not then, and not now. Because whatever Bass wanted - whatever he _needed_ , more than anything else in the world - _Miles_ kept from him.

The whiskey burns in his veins and Bass clenches his teeth as the wagon hits another crack in the road. It may be a long ride, but he knows what he's going to do at the end of it.

He's going to run a sword through his best friend's heart.


	9. Warning Lights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original author's notes on this chapter, since the story was too funny to leave out: 
> 
> This update grew and changed and morphed like one of those shapeshifty goddesses in myths that change forms as they try to kill you. Eventually, I forced it into this stasis with my word wrestling powers, but it still feels like half an update to me, even though it's crazy long. Next half coming soon - and it will include Miles playing GUITAR! :-)
> 
> Also, hilarious story from a couple nights ago when I first tried to post this: I logged on to post it, and immediately, all of the power in my house flickered and buzzed, Revolution-style, the lights went dim for a minute, and then it all went out. But here's the really funny part: When everything started to buzz and flicker, I went running around the house looking in every room downstairs for candles and a lighter - until my roommate looked at me strangely and handed me a flashlight. It had not even OCCURRED to me to look for a battery-powered light source. SIGH.

_Warning Lights_

Miles wakes in pitch black, the rattle of the wagon just stilling around him. They've stopped, and it takes a moment for his groggy brain to process time information from the look of the stars overhead. He's slept the better part of six hours. Nora should have woken him after two, but his irritation at being allowed to oversleep is dimmed slightly by the fact that his thought processes and reaction time seem almost normal again.

He clambers out of the wagon bed, trying not to step on Bass - who's either unconscious again or sleeping like the dead - or on Danny or Rachel, who've both fallen asleep leaning against the opposite side of the wagon from Bass. Nora and Charlie have dismounted, both moving stiffly and a little bow-legged after six-plus hours in the saddle - poor Charlie's probably never ridden longer than an hour in her life, and from the way she's half limping, she's really hurting. Nora should have known better than to let her ride that long, and should have woken him to swap with her.

He steps up quietly beside Nora, who hands him the reins to her horse and points ahead of them at a large house surrounded by a tree line and an eight-foot fence. Nora motions a "stay here" and jogs off by herself toward the house's front gate. Miles watches her form fade to a silhouette against the lantern light on the gate, then redirects his attention to the house. Something looks - and it suddenly becomes clear to Miles just how much of the navigation he's left up to Nora for the last eight hours when he realizes that he recognizes the place.

This is Harold Eberhart's plantation. Eight years ago, the Eberharts had been as Republic-loyal a family as you could find in Pennsylvania, and that'd been saying something. Hell, he'd brought soldiers here on work duty once to help bring in the Militia's share of the Eberharts' crop, and he'd watched Harold put a bullet through the forehead of a rebel sympathizer caught stealing from his fields. Harold hadn't blinked.

So, either Nora knows something he doesn't, or this is all about to go to hell. Of course, it's probably about to go to hell either way. Whether Harold's switched sides or the plantation is under new management, someone is bound to recognize Bass. Nora had suggested they introduce Bass as "Brett Miller," a rebel spy placed undercover in the Militia who'd helped them break Rachel and Danny out. It conveniently explains away Bass's uniform and his injuries ("sustained in the escape"), but it still feels weak to Miles. _He_ wouldn't believe it.

And even _if_ everyone buys Nora's story, Harold's going to know Miles immediately. This is the part he hates most about being back in the world again - _everyone's_ an enemy. His old friends hate him for deserting, and his old enemies hate him for - well, for everything else.

At least in his bar, ninety-five percent of people hadn't wanted to kill him on sight.

The sound of footsteps - at least three sets - puts him on immediate alert. A few seconds later, Nora emerges from the darkness, flanked by two guards. They're all escorted inside the gates in silence, then one of the guards takes the reins to the wagon horses while the other just points at the entrance to the main house like the goddamn Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. ( _A Christmas Carol_ was the only holiday movie Miles had ever liked, and he still can't put his finger on why. Scrooge is an ass, and the whole story's a little creepy.)

Nora gives him a tense smile, everyone groggily piles out of the wagon, and he slings Bass over his shoulder, waving off Aaron when he tries to help.

They trudge up a couple of stairs to the pillared front door, where Nora looks at him, then knocks. The door swings open almost immediately, revealing a man who's always reminded Miles of an athletic Santa Claus - jocular, wide-shouldered, gray-bearded Harold Eberhart. Nora steps in front of Miles, blocking his view - and Harold's, for which he's grateful. He'd rather not slug it out right here on the porch, and he doesn't like his chances anyway with only one hand free.

"Nora Clayton!" Harold booms like she's a long-lost daughter, literally lifting her from her feet in a bear hug. "Come in!" he continues - redundantly, since he's already set her down on the other side of the threshold. All six of them file into the huge stone-tiled foyer, Danny, Charlie, and Aaron craning their heads to stare at the sweeping staircase, the art on the walls, and the general "I've got a boatload of money" decor of the place.

Rachel looks less impressed, but living in the capitol of the Monroe Republic for eight years will do that to you.

Harold sets two massive hands on Nora's shoulder, frowning like Ben used to frown at Miles when he'd visited on leave looking a little too gaunt and hollow-eyed for Ben's taste. "It's been far too long, Nora. I know you're busy restoring the United States, but you could at least stop by for dinner once every six months."

Nora smiles and bats Harold's hands away. "Just what you need, Harry - a known rebel bomb maker frequenting your spare bedroom."

"Oh? Have you become famous, then?" Harold laughs.

"She's working on it," Aaron mutters under his breath, his eyes sliding unconsciously to Bass before Rachel jabs him hard in the ribs, as Nora says, "I may have provided fireworks for a few important events."

Harold keeps right on chuckling as he jerks his bearded chin at the rest of the group. "Who're your friends?"

"Harry, this is Rachel, her two children - Charlie and Danny - and Aaron Pittman - " Harold raises an eyebrow like he recognizes the name, though Miles notices Nora's conveniently left out -

Harold notices too. "Rachel, Charlie, and Danny…?"

"Matheson," Charlie answers, planting her hands on her hips like she's ready to defend the name.

Harold looks sharply at Nora, then at Rachel. "Wife?"

Miles' head snaps up in time to see Rachel wince visibly. He looks away, studying the woodwork on the long, curving bannister, but he still hears Rachel's sigh as she replies softly, "Sister-in-law."

Harold regards her steadily for a long moment, reading something in her blue eyes. Then, apparently satisfied, he turns toward Miles.

"The unconscious one is Brett Miller," Nora begins, "and he - "

But Nora's cover story turns out not to be necessary after all, because apparently Harold doesn't give a damn about "Brett Miller" when the person carrying "Brett Miller" is…

" _Miles Matheson_ ," Harold spits, eyes narrowing until he looks a lot more like the Harold Miles remembers. "So my intel guys really weren't shitting me."

Well, that hadn't taken long. Five escape plans run through Miles' head in a split second, but they're all too likely to get one or all of them killed. He opts for squaring his shoulders and staring right back into Harold's blue eyes.

"Harold," he says, keeping his voice carefully even. He pauses, then can't not ask. "How long have you been playing both sides?"

Harold's eyes grow a little less narrow, and for a second, Miles could swear they actually _twinkle_. "Been working deep cover for the resistance since before your last visit, General."

 _Harold Eberhart_ , model citizen of the Monroe Republic, had been a goddamned _rebel_ for the better part of fifteen years, and no one in Miles' Militia, including himself, had even noticed? Hell, he'd eaten dinner with the man ten years ago and talked over his and Bass's plans for the Republic's expansion into New York and Harold had sat right there across the table from him, lying through his teeth. Rage flashes through him -

\- and Harold sees it. From a holster strapped inside his jacket, he produces a Militia-issue 9mm and aims it at Miles' chest.

He could have killed Harold three times in the time it took the older man to draw his gun, but Miles just stands there. Because honestly, he deserves it. What the hell does it matter now that Harold had lied to him ten years ago? He should be throwing the man a fucking party. Congratulations - you didn't get killed by me back when I was a murdering psychopath. For a second, he wishes Harold would just pull the damn trigger.

Then Nora yells "Harry!" and Charlie yells "Miles!" and _both_ women jump in front of him like goddamn fools.

Suddenly, Harold's pointing a gun at his niece and his - well, whatever Nora is to him, and he really can't think about that right now - and Miles feels rage for an entirely different reason. "Nora! Charlie!" he growls, shoving his way between them. " _Get out of the way_." He steps fully in front of Charlie and Nora, shifting Bass's dead weight on his shoulder, and takes two steps closer to Harold until the muzzle of the gun grazes his shirt.

"Let me put this idiot down first." Miles jerks his head at Bass. "Then, you can shoot me if you want." He pauses, fixing Harold with the full weight of everything he feels on the subject: "But if you ever point a gun at my family again - " He looks Harold straight in the eyes and hopes the other man is remembering every nightmarish story he's ever heard about him - "I will break your neck with my own damn hands." Slowly, not taking his eyes off Harold, Miles lowers Bass to the floor, then straightens, raising his hands and stepping forward till the 9mm's actually pressing against his chest.

Charlie lets out a strangled sob, and Miles almost loses his nerve right there. It takes everything in him not to just break Harold's wrist and take the gun.

But he can't.

Because that's what General Matheson would have done.

The cold from the gunmetal starts to seep through Miles' shirt as Harold regards him for a moment, like he's assessing something about him - but hell if Miles knows what it is. Then the gun disappears into Harold's coat as quickly as it appeared. "Good enough for me," he says, smiling.

Charlie rushes forward, throwing her arms around Miles with a tear-streaked grin, and it's possible that he's actually getting used to his niece's sudden displays of affection, because he doesn't immediately tense. He just peels her arms off one at a time and wriggles from her hold, awkwardly ruffling her hair with one hand like she's a puppy. "See? I'm a master negotiator."

Harold claps Miles on the shoulder hard enough to send him staggering, and, with a hearty chuckle, adds, "Welcome to the rebellion's best-kept secret base, Mr. Matheson."

"Just Miles," he mutters, bending to pick up Bass again. This time, Nora moves to help him, something unreadable in her eyes, and Miles lets her shoulder half of Bass's weight, looking away when she tries to catch his eye.

From previous visits, he knows that the Eberhart plantation is huge, and he finds that he's - grudgingly - impressed that Harold's managed to run an entire resistance operation right under the Militia's noses while wining and dining most of Militia high command. He's stayed here before, and remembers it being a nice, if a little overly opulent, vacation from sleeping in tents on the march. Tonight, Harold just waves a hand at the entire upstairs and says, "Help yourselves. You look exhausted. I'll wake you for breakfast." Charlie, Danny, Aaron, and Rachel trundle up the stairs, ahead of Miles, Nora, and Harold. As they climb, Harold looks over at Miles and Nora and sighs. "I'd offer to send a rider for a doctor for your friend, but the only one I trust was executed last week for treating both rebels _and_ Militia soldiers after a skirmish."

Beside Miles, Nora pauses, forcing him to slow his pace. "Anthony?" she asks quietly.

Harold nods. "Saw it happen. Had to have the bastard commander over for dinner afterwards and laugh at his goddamned jokes." His voice thickens. "Just gotta keep thinking it'll be worth it when we finally blow up the whole damn Republic from the inside."

Nora reaches over with her free hand and squeezes his arm, smiling grimly. "You're still doing the right thing, Harold. Even when you're doing the wrong thing, you're - "

" - doing the right thing. I know, I know," Harold finishes her sentence, returning her grim smile. "Now, c'mon; let's do the right thing for your friend here."

Miles places his feet carefully as he navigates the last few steps, and wonders how Nora'd met Harold. They have a comfortable rapport that suggests a long-term friendship, but she hadn't known the man when Miles had been with her…of course, she'd had six years on her own since then, during which she could have met a lot of men… He slams the door shut on that particular line of thought. Her life; her business. But suddenly, he's noticing that Nora's close enough for him to pick up the familiar jasmine-and-gunpowder scent of her hair. When had he tuned in to that? What is he now - jealous? Nora's always been free to do whatever the hell she wants, with whoever the hell she -

He misses a step, and starts thinking about his feet instead.

The upstairs hallway is as enormous as the rest of the house. Miles can hear soft exclamations of surprise, mostly from Charlie, as she and Danny walk up and down the hall, opening door after door to almost ridiculously opulent bedrooms. Harold swings open the door to the nearest one, and Miles and Nora install Bass, not without difficulty, in the bed.

He looks like shit, but he's still breathing, the splint's still in place, and, amazingly, he hasn't bled through the bandages. In other words, there's nothing to do for him. It's chilly in the room, so Miles lights a fire in the fireplace and throws the blankets over Bass. Then he pulls his canteen out of his pack, takes a swig, and leaves it on the nightstand.

Nora and Harold have disappeared into the hallway, chatting like old friends. Almost like father and daughter, really. Shit, he's missed a lot in six years.

He turns to follow them, so his back is to the bed when Bass's rasping voice makes him nearly jump out of his skin: " _Why_?"

Miles turns, to find Bass with his eyes open, staring at him piercingly. "Why what?" he returns, automatically. His heartbeat's still thudding in his ears, muffling the sound of his own voice.

"You got out, got what you wanted. You got your _family_ \- " Bass spits the word " - so why keep me?"

Miles squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Maybe I missed your sparkling personality."

"Fuck you, Miles."

Bass has always been surly when he's in pain.

"Glad to see you're feeling better."

Bass takes a slow, hissing breath, and locks his eyes onto Miles'. And Miles isn't always the best at reading people, but he's known Bass for a million years, and for just a second, Miles can see through those eyes clear down into Bass's soul, and what he sees there isn't frustration or malice or spite or anger. It's rage. Absolute, blinding rage.

The last time he'd seen that look, Bass had punched him in the face a second later, resulting in a twenty minute brawl fueled by alcohol and jealousy. They'd both come out of it bleeding - Miles with a broken nose, Bass with two broken ribs - but friends.

But this time, there's something else in that look. Something that tells Miles that Bass doesn't just want to punch him.

He wants to kill him.

"You know they're gonna come kill you, Miles, right? All of you," Bass whispers, leaning his head back against the pillows - and it's weird to see him with dark, close-cropped hair, without his trademark curls - "Nora, Rachel, even that fat guy…"

Nine hours ago, Bass'd been cracking fucking jokes like they were on campaign together. Now, he's someone else - the President and evil overlord of the Monroe Republic - and maybe Miles'd been wrong to bring him along. Hell, of course he'd been wrong. They don't need a hostage - he'd lied to Rachel - and they'd be able to move ten times faster without an injured man in their party.

Maybe Bass is just too far gone.

And yet, he'd had six hours on a wagon ride, for which Miles now suspects he'd been awake, during which he could have cut Miles' throat several hundred times. Miles hadn't even bothered to disarm him.

He'd been careless - which, with his own life, was no big deal - but he'd also put Charlie and the others in danger, because he'd looked at Bass over that rifle scope back in the power plant and wanted something that he couldn't have back.

In two strides, Miles crosses to the bed, drawing a sword, which he lays against Bass's neck. Bass, wisely, shuts up. With his other hand, Miles unbuckles and takes Bass's swords and sword belt and checks him for other weapons.

"Thought I was Brett Miller," Bass rasps, adam's apple pressing against Miles' sword blade. "How you gonna explain disarming your ally?"

"I don't want Brett Miller to stab himself in his sleep. I'm a concerned friend."

"You're a lying fuck."

Miles shrugs. "Semantics." Then he raps Bass across the temple with the brass-knuckled sword hilt, hard enough to knock him out. Miles isn't really afraid of what he'll do if he's awake - he can't get far on a broken leg - but it's never been Bass's actions that are dangerous.

It's his words.

 _You're a lying fuck._ Miles had lied to Bass about exactly two things in his life, one of them almost twenty years ago. He has an unsettling feeling that that's not the one Bass is talking about.

Trying to ignore the increasingly twisting feeling in his gut, Miles steps out into the hall, closing the door behind him, and goes to look for Rachel.


	10. Radiator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My original author's notes on this chapter: I had a really difficult time with this chapter, so I've decided to split it into two parts (thus, sorry, but you'll have to wait for Miles' guitar-playing in the second part). I've waited this long for a Rachel POV chapter because I find her complicated and it's difficult to follow her shifting emotions. I hope I've done it justice.
> 
> Disclaimer: Revolution still doesn't belong to me, and neither do its characters (and in the case of Rachel Matheson, I'm actually thankful for that fact).

_Radiator_

It's strange, sitting in this opulent room in this opulent house, and knowing that she can leave at any time. Rachel Matheson runs a hand over the ornate bedspread, tracing its swirls of gold thread over the deep burgundy background. Danny and Charlie are next door, just one room over, and she can step over there and see her children whenever she likes.

And yet she's sitting here, staring at the logs in the burned-out fireplace, as her fingernails catch on the silk threads of the bedspread and the cold starts to seep through her shirt.

She hasn't left Philadelphia for eight years, and in an odd way, she feels…displaced. Her own children barely know her, Aaron looks at her like she's a ghost, and Miles - Miles seems to be avoiding looking at her at all.

Miles. His presence on this trip has to be Charlie's doing. How Charlie had located him, Rachel has no idea, but Charlie Matheson is irresistibly persuasive; once she'd found Miles, it would have been no large task for her to convince her guilt-ridden uncle to accompany her on her rescue mission. That Miles has stuck around this long after the rescue is the bigger surprise.

When Charlie had first mentioned "Uncle Miles," Rachel's heart had lurched and her stomach had twisted with dread. The Miles she'd known eight years ago had been as bad and sometimes even worse than Bass.

But this Miles - Charlie's Miles - had brought her daughter safely halfway across the country, straight to the place he'd least wanted to go in the world, and put his life on the line more than once to rescue her family.

And what really, truly frightens her is that _this_ Miles, she could almost mistake for the Miles who'd lain next to her half a lifetime ago, warming her cold hands on his bare chest, chuckling in the darkness as she'd traced the swirling tattoos covering his upper arms -

Her fingers pause in their trace of the bedspread, and she stands, crossing the room to the window.

The lights on the wall outside flicker, casting shifting pools of illumination on the wall stones, and Rachel leans her head against the cool glass, slowing her breathing, trying to dispel the absurd surge of…what is this?

When she'd heard her name back in the power plant, in _his voice_ , it had finally crashed down into her awareness that she'd actually been waiting for him to come back for her.

For eight years.

And then she'd turned, and there he was, and she'd been so suddenly angry that it had taken him this damn long to come back that she'd slapped him hard enough to leave a mark.

She's not sure if it's hours or minutes later - she's learned to let days wash over her this way, retreated inside the quiet of her own head - but suddenly, there's an interrupting knock at the door. Her stomach tenses and she waits for the door to open of its own accord. Then she remembers that she actually has to give permission.

She can't quite find her voice, so she leans back from the window pane, walks to the door, and opens it.

It's Miles.

He barely meets her eyes, his gaze brushing across hers too fast to get caught. Nevertheless, she catches the familiar blend of self-loathing and apology in his brown eyes as he mumbles, "Jeez, Rachel; it's freezing in here." He brushes past her, and eight more years of miles traveled and battle scars accrued have only served to make his frame leaner, his muscles harder. If anything, he actually looks younger…everywhere except his eyes.

He crouches to light the fire in the fireplace, turning his back to her and bending his head forward over the kindling as he pulls a flint from a slot cut in the fireplace bricks and strikes the first sparks. As he works, Rachel lets her eyes travel from Miles' close-cropped brown hair down the back of his neck to the collar of his jacket. It's not a Militia-issue jacket, but it's a close enough cut to call up a host of old memories. She takes a breath to quell them.

Miles, greeting her at the entrance to the Militia stable yard five miles outside Philly, looking so somber in response to her smile.

Miles, two weeks later, shouting at Bass while the door swings shut behind her as she's ushered out by two soldiers.

Miles, standing silhouetted against her doorway, guilt dripping from his slumped frame, telling her that they can't let her leave, that she knows too much, that the only way to protect Danny and Charlotte from Bass is for her to stay there…

The fire pops and roars to life, and Miles stands, pushing off his knees, and turns to face Rachel. The swords at his sides clink, and Rachel suddenly realizes he's wearing two sword belts - his and Bass's. Bass's black leather belt hangs crosswise over the surcingle buckle of Miles' wider belt, and the swords, apart from their sheathes, are nearly identical pairs.

Like their owners.

And as glad as she'd been to see him in the power plant, it's this, as always, that gives her pause: Miles has always been just a narrow half-step away from being Bass - it had happened once, and no matter how much he's changed over the last eight years, that potential is always there. Twenty years ago, she'd thought she could handle that - that she could play with that kind of bottled power and keep it under control.

Then her research had created a machine that she'd unintentionally unleashed on a helpless world. And the fallout from her affair with Miles had shaped the General who'd crushed that world beneath his boots.

Miles catches her looking at the belts and meets her eyes almost by accident. Rachel turns her gaze deliberately to the carpet. Then, she speaks, softly - she's learned to do this around dangerous men, to keep her voice low enough not to register as a threat, soft enough to seem comforting and helpful: "Why, Miles?"

Miles snorts, putting his hands on his hips and looking at the floor as he shakes his head. "Getting that question a lot lately."

Rachel feels her face morph into a frown, but she can't help it. "Seriously, Miles - why come back now? It's been _eight years_. _Eight_."

"Yeah, well…" He sighs, ruffling a hand through the back of his hair. "Ask your damn kid." He squares his shoulders a little and looks up, settling his eyes on hers for the first time. "I didn't come here to talk about that, Rachel. You told Bass something on that wagon ride. What did you say?"

And there it is: he sounds just like Bass again. They _are_ just like each other, with their questions and their demands, not caring at all what kind of hell she's been through. She may be looking at Miles, but it's Bass she hears speaking: _"You know something about the power, Rachel. What is it? What were you and Ben working on?"_

She feels a now-familiar rush of anger - good to know that Miles' ability to make her instantly angry hasn't changed in the last twenty years - and it makes her snap back at him. "Go screw yourself, Miles." She turns her back -

\- and feels his hand close around her wrist, hard. In one jerk, he spins her back around to face him, and he's suddenly standing so close that she can smell the horsehair and gunshot residue still clinging to his coat, and underneath that...

Against her own judgment, she breathes in. Wet wool and whiskey. Campfire and horse sweat and leather. _Miles_. A groan builds between her chest and throat, but she swallows it back, listening to her heartbeat hammer in her ears. He smells different than he had before the Blackout - or maybe he'd always smelled like this, under the aftershave, and if so, it's the first time she's appreciated the results of worldwide power suppression - but it still sends a jolt straight through to her stomach.

Then the tendons in her wrist throb and contract, sending a vicious spike of pain up Rachel's arm that gives her something to latch onto besides the dizzying smell of whiskey and fire smoke. Miles is staring at her through hard, glittering eyes, and her wrist is hurting badly enough that her own eyes well with tears, but she wills them away, along with any attached emotions. Too much has happened in twenty years. Instead, she looks, very slowly, at Miles' grip on her wrist, then up to his face.

"You have changed," she murmurs. She pauses, watching the hardness in his eyes falter for just a second.

His grip on her wrist loosens, and she knows - knows - that even now, twenty years late, if she says the right thing, if she plays this moment right, they'll end up on the bed behind her. And she wants that so badly that she can feel the overwhelming terror of it in her bones.

So she opens her mouth…and says the one thing she knows will send him running. "Now, you're exactly like him."

Miles recoils as if burned, dropping her wrist - glancing with a rush of guilt in his eyes at the red marks left by his fingers - and turns so fast to leave that his coat flares out behind him. He's out the door before Rachel moves from her spot.

And though the fire he'd built is still roaring, the room is colder when he goes.


	11. Shift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, the first half of this chapter includes the promised guitar-playing scene (yay!). The second half comes with a WARNING for some mild Miles/Nora sexytimes. Not M-rated, but maybe a smidge T-plus.

_Shift_

Charlie cracks the door to her room in time to see Miles practically run down the hallway away from her mother's room. She can hardly blame him; she'd felt like bolting from the room the first time she'd seen Rachel again…really, the only reason she hadn't had been that they'd actually been locked in.

Now, she's had several long hours of riding to sort out her own feelings after Rachel had told the story behind the Blackout, and she's decided that it's hard to fault her mother for wanting to protect Danny. After all, Charlie's spent more than half of her own life doing just that.

She steps into the hallway to call to Miles, but before she can, Harold's voice travels up the stairs:

"Matheson? Get down here. I've got something you'll want to see."

Charlie pokes her head back into her room as Miles turns to head down the stairs. "Danny, come on."

Her brother raises his head from a book he'd found on the nightstand. "What?"

She sighs. Danny isn't exactly the most adventurous person in the world. "Just come on."

Reluctantly, he trails after her into the hallway and down the stairs, still holding the book in one hand. Miles', Nora's, and Harold's voices travel up the stairs from the living room.

"Militia executed the owner a week before you deserted. Got turned over to me as salvage, and I kept it for you. Thought it'd make a good present if I ever needed to curry favor with the General." Harold's voice.

Then Nora's, and Charlie can hear her smile: "I think it's working, Harry."

Charlie opts to abandon subtlety and simple runs down the stairs, jumping the last few in a single leap. She slips into the living room behind Nora, craning her neck to look around Nora's shoulder.

Miles is sitting on the edge of one of Harold's oversized sofas, one knee crossed over the other, cradling a dark mahogany guitar. There'd been one guitar in Charlie's village growing up - a old, cracked maple-wood Gibson for which there were never enough strings - and only two people who'd known how to play, one of whom was seventy-five and, in Maggie's words, "couldn't carry a tune in a bucket."

 _This_ guitar is a work of art. There's some kind of shiny inlay of twisting vines running up the neck and down over the pick guard below the strings, and the wood is polished to a dark, reflective glow. Miles runs a calloused hand over the smooth surface, closing the fingers of his left hand slowly in a rough "w" pattern on the neck.

"Played it a little to keep it in shape," Harold mumbles as Miles takes a breath, and strokes a thumb over the strings. And this is music as Charlie's never heard it before - an instrument that sings with its owner, rising and falling with the increasing tempo of Miles' fingers on the strings.

There are hitches in the first few chords as Miles retrains his hands like he's trying to get them to remember a foreign language. And then, suddenly, it clicks, and his fingers go flying through chord patterns faster than Charlie can follow, and a second later, he's tapping his foot and thumping out a rhythm on the side of the guitar in between strums. Then he opens his mouth, and here's a surprise: Miles can _sing_.

His voice comes out lower and much smoother than it is when he speaks, regaining its familiar rough edges a little on the high notes. She doesn't recognize the song, but Harold obviously does, because he joins in on the chorus, and pretty soon, all of them are singing, though Nora, Charlie, and Danny have only picked up half the words, so the next chorus ends up oddly punctuated by their interjections of the words they do know.

Miles flies into the bridge solo, and by that time, the commotion has attracted Aaron from upstairs. He appears and stands beside Charlie and Nora with his mouth hanging wide open as Miles' voice lingers long and clear on the last note of the bridge, then drops into a final, slower chorus. And then Charlie actually jumps as Aaron begins to sing, too - in a rich baritone she can hardly believe is coming from the normally quiet science nerd. Even Miles snaps his head up for a second and grins in appreciation, and Harold nods, picking up the harmony with Aaron for a few notes as the song draws to a close.

Miles' voice falls silent; his fingers pluck out a few final notes that resonate throughout the silence like fireworks, and with one last, cascading strum, Miles rests his hand on the side of the guitar, head bowed over the strings.

Charlie and Aaron wait about half a second and then break out into thunderous applause, in which the others quickly join. Miles raises his head, drawing an arm quickly across his eyes, and rolls his eyes at his assembled audience. "I can't be _that_ good. I haven't played in fifteen years." He rises, keeping hold of the guitar by the neck, crosses to Harold -

\- and wraps the older man in a one-armed hug. Charlie blinks, and Nora, next to her, can't seem to close her mouth. With a "thanks" that sounds like it caught in his throat on the way out, Miles claps Harold on the back a couple of times and retreats, free hand rising to rub the back of his own neck like he's a little embarrassed by his display.

Harold just grins, showing both rows of teeth in a way that makes Charlie think of a large, jovial bear. "You're welcome, Matheson." He pauses, then leans in toward Miles and drops into a voice that only Charlie is paying close enough attention to hear. "Good to see those hands can do something besides wield a sword."

Miles pulls back, blinking a couple times like he's trying to clear something from his eyes, and nods almost imperceptibly.

Then the moment is over, and, one by one, after a bit more chuckling and several slaps on the back for Miles that seem to just make him more uncomfortable, they all head back upstairs for some decent rest. Charlie's counted, and this is going to be the first real bed she's slept in in two and a half months, and she throws herself into it in one excited leap.

A few minutes later, as she drifts off, keeping one eye on Danny in the next bed over, she can still hear the music ringing in her head. She falls asleep smiling.

…

Never let it be said that Nora Clayton is not patient. She waits a full ten minutes after Miles flees up the stairs with his guitar to knock on the door of his room.

"Miles?"

When there's no answer, she turns the knob and cracks the door - to an empty room. The fire crackles, reflecting in the polished surface of the guitar, which rests against the wall next to the bed. Miles' jacket is laying across the chair in the middle of the room. But no Miles. Nora sighs and shuts the door with a soft click, proceeding down the hall to the next door. This time, she doesn't knock.

Instead she cracks the door silently, lifting the knob to remove the slight scraping noise of pressure on the doorframe. Miles stands with his back to the door, shoulders slouched, looking down at Bass's unconscious form.

Even back when she'd been temping as a mercenary for the Militia (and a bed-warmer for General Miles), Nora had always avoided Bass as much as possible. He'd creeped her out, first of all - at least Miles had had _rules_ for his violence - and secondly, she'd not been overly enamored of the way he'd toyed with Miles' head. She'd gotten pretty good at reading when the General had been doubting himself or his decisions, or even having a crisis of belief in his own cause, and at each of those moments, infallibly, Bass had been there to push him in the wrong direction.

Looking back, it'd been half the reason Nora had eventually left Miles: Even after he'd deserted and put a thousand miles between himself and Bass, he'd never really been able to let go of the relationship. It had taken him two years after she'd left to make that botched assassination attempt (and for just the tiniest part of a second, when she'd heard about it, she'd wondered if he'd done it for her…then she'd laughed herself out of town, because what kind of schoolgirl crush did she still have if she thought _Miles Matheson_ would try to assassinate his best friend and the President of his own Republic to win her back?). And now, four years later, he'd come face to face with Bass and been unable to pull the trigger, again.

There's a clink of glass against metal as Miles raises a bottle to his lips, scraping it past his sword hilts on the way up.

"You know," she says, pushing the door open and waltzing into the room, "if you're going to be a self-destructive asshole, you could at least do it with company."

Miles doesn't turn, but his head raises just slightly, the muscles in the back of his neck standing out, and Nora grins in satisfaction. He hadn't know she was there.

"I've got company," he mutters, waving the end of the bottle at Bass. Whatever liquor he's drinking - and she's not quite close enough to smell it - is already half gone. Maybe she should have waited five minutes instead of ten.

She steps up behind him, hooking two fingers in the back of his sword belt and pulling, firmly. "I'm better company," she whispers, standing on her tiptoes so her breath ghosts across the side of his neck.

Miles grunts, but allows himself to be led back to his room without a fight. Once there, Nora pries the bottle of - good God, had Harry really left _gin_ in Miles' room? She's going to kill that man… - pries the bottle of gin out of Miles' hands, throws back her head and takes a swig - and it's actually pretty decent, so maybe she won't murder Harry outright - then clunks it down onto the nightstand.

Miles is grinning at her, one eyebrow raised, and Nora realizes his eyes have wandered to where the hem of her tank top has pulled up across her midriff. She leans down into his field of vision - just to catch his eye, and decidedly _not_ because it puts her cleavage on display - and sets her hands on her hips.

"Uh-uh. Bath first, Matheson. You smell like a horse."

Miles rolls his eyes and strips off his shirt - and he's still built like a swordsman - tall and lean, with every muscle made of the same flexible steel as his blades. "You just want a shot at real hot water for once. Beauty queen."

He's half right. Harry's a genius - the real, off-the charts IQ kind - and one of the best parts of her stint here five years ago had been real, running hot water, heated by a wood-burning furnace and delivered via a series of steam-powered pumps. Harry had always lit the furnace for important guests, so assuming they qualify, then -

Miles turns the tap and jumps back with a curse as a rush of steam and water pours out. He waves a scalded hand, scowling.

Nora grins. "Too fancy for you?"

He snorts, still waving his hand. "Yeah. Never did hold with water. Give me a good dirt bath; I'm good to go."

"You look like you've had one of those already." Nora shrugs off her jacket and sits on the edge of the bed to remove her boots. Actually, Miles _does_ look like he's had a dirt bath. There's dust and mortar coated in his hair and dried blood from Bass's leg wound streaked across the leg of his pants. His hands are a mess of small nicks and cuts covered with ground-in dirt, with the exception of the pads of the fingers of his left hand, where the dirt and the first layer of skin have been rubbed off by the guitar strings.

Miles reaches to remove his swords - and he's wearing _two_ sets, one on each hip. One of those must be Bass's, but Nora is smart enough to act like she doesn't notice. Some things with Miles, she's learned to leave alone. He lays the first pair of swords across the arms of the chair that holds his jacket, and props the second set - his set - against the wall next to the tub.

Nora leans back on the heels of her hands to watch him. Oddly, this has always been the most intimate moment of sex with Miles - the fact that he'll disarm himself in front of her. Without those swords, even though he's still wearing pants and combat boots, he might as well be naked.

"So," he says, over the splash and swirl of water filling the tub, "How'd you meet 'Harry'?"

She's not prepared to answer that question. She'd met Harold Eberhardt when the Militia had turned her over to him to work off her sentence for beating the shit out of those soldiers. That had been three days after she'd lost the baby, and she'd been a royal mess.

Harry had seen it right away. He'd kept her going, helped her give her pain purpose - connected her with the rebellion. She'd stayed for a year and a half, making pipe bombs for the rebels in Harry's basement and running the odd reconnaissance mission, before she'd hooked up and left with with a group of rebels looking to raid arms depots and stockpile weapons and ammo to mount a real resistance.

Truth be told, Harry had probably saved her life.

But it's just not the kind of story she and Miles tell each other. So she answers him like he'd answer her: with a shrug and an evasion. "You stay involved with the rebels in this area long enough, you meet Harry."

She stands and brushes past Miles, turning off the water with one hand and testing it with the other. Hot enough to sting. She's out of her pants and tank top in a blink, and slipping into the water with a groan of pure enjoyment. Nora closes her eyes and rests her head against the side of the tub, feeling the steam rise from her skin to dampen her face and hair.

There's a double thud as Miles kicks off his boots, and then Miles' rough legs slide next to hers as he lowers himself into the water. "Shit, that's hot, Nora."

"Gotta boil the dirt off," she says, slipping over next to him and running a hand over his shoulder and bicep. She's asked before about the spiraling tattoos that criss-cross Miles' upper arms (he'd gotten them after his first and second tours, respectively), and she doesn't need to ask about the arched "M" emblazoned on the inside of his right forearm. Instead, she picks up his left hand, running her fingers over the tips of his, feeling the indentations left by the guitar strings.

"I've never heard anybody play like that."

He leans back and looks at her out of the corner of his eye. The edge of his mouth turns up in a smile. "Shoulda' gone to more concerts instead of all those Miss Teen USA competitions."

Nora puts her left hand on his unshaven jaw and turns his head, looking straight into his eyes with her best serious expression. "You're an ass, Miles."

He grins. Then he leans in and kisses her.

Miles is whiskey and fire, sunsets and a shock like cold river water and the sharpened edge of a blade. Nora tips her head back, leaning into his touch - rough hands against smooth skin - and he groans through his teeth, snaking his hand up the back of Nora's neck and twisting his fingers into her hair like he's trying to anchor himself there. "Nora…" Her name comes out as a growl as he moves to kiss her again, stubble scraping her chin.

There's a burn like whiskey sweeping through her veins, and the next few minutes pass in a blur. When her back hits the edge of the tub and Miles slips and half-drowns, he lets out a frustrated growl and picks her up bodily from the water, practically flinging them both onto the bed. She's cold for half a second before he covers her body with his.

After that, neither of them are cold for quite a while.

A little while later, as she lays splayed across Miles' chest over the damp sheets, she feels his rough voice tickle her ear. "Does this make you my band groupie?" A chuckle moves his throat.

Nora turns her teeth into the side of his neck, nipping at the source of that chuckle. "The man plays one song," she murmurs, "and he thinks he's a rock god."

"I _am_ a rock god," Miles mumbles, shifting her over until her head rests in the crook of his shoulder and burying his face in her hair. He breathes in, slowly, and his voice drops to a whisper. "Goddamned God of Rock and Roll, here…"

His breathing evens out and slows, and Nora can tell he's asleep by the time she closes her eyes. The firelight plays across the backs of her eyelids and Miles' heartbeat is a warm, steady cadence in her ear.

Nora hasn't had a home since she and Mia had fled their family's house after the Blackout. And for most of that time, she hasn't needed or desired one. She's grown to like the life of adventure, the life of movement and change, the life constantly on the road. But there are times, like this one, when she starts to realize that, little by little, she _is_ finding a home. One, like her, that's constantly in motion.

Nora sighs and snuggles a few inches closer to Miles' sleeping form, relaxing against the slow beat of his heart. Well, _almost_ constantly in motion.

She drops off to sleep with a smile.


	12. Lug Nut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, when I was first writing this, the end of this chapter was the beginning of the part of the story I was excited about. C'mon, geek out with me and Bass and Aaron for a bit. I promise it'll be fun... :-D

_Lug Nut_

The last time Aaron Pittman slept so well was a lifetime ago, when he owned two jets, fourteen software patents, and a chain of private islands.

But the dreams haven't changed.

He's sitting in one of his jets right now, the _thrum_ of the engines buzzing in his internal organs, just enough to upset his stomach. He never eats before flights. And it's not his jet after all, he realizes as he looks around and feels a sudden gust of wind ruffle his hair and tug at his glasses – it's a helicopter (and he hadn't owned one of those, but he really should have; he could've taken Priscilla to see the – oh, damn, this thing makes him queasier than the jet; thank God he never bought one….).

Rotor wash and wind whip through the open door, roaring in his ears, and Aaron squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden nausea. His heart's pounding all the way up in his Adam's apple – _thump thump thump thump thump_ , in syncopation with the rotors – and if it pounds any harder, it's going to shake the meager contents of his stomach loose all over the floor.

Fuck. How can you be so nauseous in your dreams? Breathe in, nose; breath out, mouth. Shit.

And then a hand falls on his shoulder, everything lurches, and he barely holds it together as he swivels to face Neville, who – and of course he has; it's a dream, a dream, a dream a dream a _dream,_ stupid – has been sitting next to him the whole time.

Neville grabs him by the front of his shirt, and Aaron can _feel_ the fingers curling into the fabric, twisting the hair on his chest. Oh shit. Maybe it's real. It _feels_ real.

And then Neville smiles…

…and throws Aaron backwards out of the helicopter.

He comes to with a yell and then grunts as his flailing hand connects with something painfully hard. Still jittering with adrenaline, Aaron blinks frantically in the darkness until he makes out the lean form of Miles Matheson, holding a sword in one hand, and rubbing his jaw with the other.

"Hell of a right hook, Aaron," Miles grunts.

"Miles? What are you doing here?" Aaron's brain is preternaturally fast ninety-nine point eight percent of the time, but woken from the middle of a sleep cycle, his code's not exactly running bug-free.

"Saving your ass, as usual." Miles looks over his shoulder like he's watching for someone, then unbuckles one of the two sword belts around his waist and shoves the pair of swords into Aaron's hands.

Two swords and a leather belt are a lot heavier than Aaron would have expected. Charlie must be building some intense arm muscles with these things. "What am I supposed to do with these?"

"They're Bass's."

Aaron's brain is moving a little faster now, but even he needs more than Miles' cryptic two-word explanation. "And?" he asks, trying not to sound pissed.

There's a noise in the corridor outside, and suddenly, Miles grabs the front of his shirt, hauls him over behind the door, and crouches in front of him, sword arm tensed. Footsteps pass the doorway, slow for a moment…and continue on.

Miles lets out a quiet breath. Aaron hasn't moved from where Miles backed him into the wall. The sweat on his shirt sticks to the drywall where it touches his back, and the swords he's carrying are jammed against his chest, but if he shifts them around, he's going to make a metric ton of noise or drop them all over the damn floor, so he just stays uncomfortable. Story of his life.

Miles pokes his head out the door for one of those impossibly-fast checks – that wouldn't be long enough for Aaron to blink, let alone ascertain possibly threats to life and limb – and taps Aaron on the shoulder, motioning _let's go_.

Aaron shifts the swords as quietly as he can onto his shoulder, and follows Miles out the door, down the hallway, and down a back staircase that's so long it's got to lead all the way underground. At the bottom of the staircase, they pass through a basement – filled with potbellied wood furnaces and a network of iron pipes that vent little hissing puffs of steam every few seconds – and into a short hallway with two doors on either side and a bookcase at the end.

Miles marches all the way down to the bookcase, ignoring the other doors, flips a hidden switch, and swings the bookcase wide open.

Aaron can't help it. "A hidden room behind a book shelf? Really?"

Miles gives a one-shouldered shrug. "Harold's a classics guy."

Aaron squeezes through the half-opened doorway and scans the room as Miles locks up the bookshelf door – which, he notes, is also a bookshelf on this side. A look at the first row reveals that _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ , _The Collected Short Stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle_ , and _The Jungle Book and other stories by Rudyard Kipling_ stand alongside a row of technical manuals on steam engine fitting, clockworks, and steel-forging, and also, ludicrously, what looks like an old _Batman_ comic book.

He's about to laugh and say something along the lines of "you weren't kidding about the classics," but then he turns to survey the rest of the room (small dining table, four chairs, two queen beds – it's a frickin' underground hotel room; what the hell?)…

…and the unconscious form of Sebastian Monroe is laid out on one of the beds.

"Uh, Miles? I don't want to seem ungrateful for the rescue or anything, but… _what the hell is going on_?"

Miles turns to him with that look Aaron hates. It's the look that promises bad news, and it's meant various things over the last few months: someone's dead, or going to be; someone's chasing them, _again_ ; they're out of food; they're going to have to fight their way out; the plan has fallen apart and they're about to do a lot of running…

When Miles does speak, his words are clipped and to the point. "Militia patrol showed up ten minutes ago at Harold's front gate. Tracked us to the road outside, then lost the trail and decided to stop here for the night to rest – irony's a bitch, huh? Harold stalled them and we cleared the hell out. Nora, Charlie, Rachel, and Danny are outside with horses."

Aaron gives Miles a long, level look, and asks the question he already knows the answer to: "Then why are we underground?"

"Bass –" Miles starts, then hesitates – "Monroe can't travel. Not on horseback, and not at the speed we need to move. Harold can't hide all of us down here, and I can't leave Rachel and her kids with only Nora to protect them – "

Aaron tries not to feel the familiar pain of Miles' unspoken assumption – _because you can't protect anybody_. "So you want me to stay here."

Apparently, Miles can't find his voice – or he's used up his quota of words for the day – but he nods, sharply.

"For how long?"

"Six weeks, seven maybe. Harold'll send food down for you. We'll take care of the patrol, go on Rachel's wild goose chase, and circle back when the coast is clear. Monroe should be able to walk by then – "

 _Yeah, walk over and strangle me and then walk right out of here_. "So let me get this straight. You want me to stay here, alone, in an underground bunker for _six weeks_ and babysit an injured homicidal maniac? Oh, if he doesn't kill me with _these_ – " He waves Monroe's swords in Miles' face. " – the second he wakes up." His voice has risen to an embarrassingly high pitch, but really, who the hell cares? Charlie's been trying to ditch him since the start of this insane road trip, and her uncle, for all that his sword-swinging badassery has saved their lives more than once, has never been what Aaron could call "nice" to him, and clearly thinks he's a major liability. He'd made some progress on that front after busting Nora out of Drexel's place – and really, why should he be surprised by now that Miles always tries to ditch him with his violent-with-a-few-screws-loose-ex-friends? – but here they are again, with everyone trying to leave Aaron behind.

Maybe it's kismet, for what he did to Priscilla. And that's a beyond depressing thought. Thankfully, it's cut off by Miles' reply:

"The swords are for _you_ , Aaron. I'd leave you a gun, but someone'd hear it." He grabs the sword belt from Aaron and drops it on the table, drawing the short sword in one smooth motion as it falls. He whirls it and hands it, hilt first, to Aaron.

"Miles, the last time I swung a sword was playing 'Legend of Zelda.'"

"It's not hard, Aaron," Miles says with a look that contains both the truth and the lie of that statement. He shoves the sword into Aaron's reluctant hand. "He tries anything, you pull the sharp edge across his throat."

"Because you can't?"

Miles stiffens, but Aaron's mad enough that he lets it carry him a little further. "You practically punched out Rachel for suggesting it was stupid to bring him along, but what the hell are we doing here, Miles? _Kidnapping_ the fucking _President_ of the Monroe Republic?"

Miles' eyes are darkening dangerously, but to hell with self-preservation now. He's about to be abandoned for six weeks with the most dangerous man on the continent; what's he got to lose? "This…this _lunatic_ has killed more people than maybe anyone else since the Blackout, and you're asking me to what, protect him? Nurse him back to health? _Kill_ him for you if he gets out of line? What the hell, Miles? At least you owe me a damn explanation for why we – " He doesn't get to say "aren't just dropping this nut job off a cliff" because Miles cuts him off with a hoarse shout:

"Yes! _All right_ , Aaron! He's a fucking crazy asshole!" He pauses, taking a deep breath. Then, quietly, "And he's my _friend_. And I – " He looks like he's chewing through the words, they're so galling to say, "I need you to do this. …Please." He holds Aaron's look with hooded, dark eyes until Aaron mumbles a quiet,

"Fine."

Then Miles grabs a pack that he's stowed in the corner like he can't wait to get out of there, shoulders it, and heads for the bookcase door. As he unlocks it and steps through, he mutters, "See you in six weeks."

And he's gone.

A second later, Aaron nearly leaves a large Aaron-shaped hole in the bookcase as Monroe's strained, exhausted voice grits out:

"'Legend of Zelda' was fucking epic."


	13. Shocks

_Shocks_

It takes Miles six whole minutes to get out of the complex and back into the woods where Nora and the rest of the Matheson family are waiting for him. Danny's jumpy as hell and almost shoots him in the dark with Charlie's crossbow before his sister stops him.

Miles grins at Charlie. She actually grins back, and damn, he's starting to love that kid, because apparently they're the only two people around who can appreciate the macabre humor in the fact that they're on the run again, this time because of plain old shitty timing.

Of course, if the patrol had passed their way two hours earlier, they'd probably all be dead. So it could have been worse.

Hell, that should be his life motto.

"Where's Aaron?" Leave it to Rachel to sound disapproving when anyone else would sound worried.

"Staying with Bass." Miles grabs the horse Nora hands him – she looks relieved to be rid of it – and mounts up, automatically making fifteen-odd minute adjustments to his reins, seat, and balance. The horse feels good - fast, but not flighty.

Rachel opens her mouth, and he's less than not in the mood, so he cuts her off: "He's a hell of a lot safer than we're about to be." She shuts up, Nora gives him a smirk, and everyone climbs as silently as possible onto their horses.

The ride away from the Eberhart plantation is Miles' favorite kind of riding – the kind that requires your full concentration and forces you to be completely present in the moment. At first, it's holy-shit-that-was-a-gopher-hole dark and they have to ride cross-country on unfamiliar paths, deer trails clogged with fallen logs, and the edges of old roads. The roads are the worst. By then, the clouds have traipsed away from the moon, and Miles spends the whole time hyper-aware of how clearly they're silhouetted against the sky and how easy it would be for someone to snipe them right off their horses. Four hours into the ride, his neck's coiled steel-cable tight from trying to keep a 360-degree watch.

Normally, Nora would be some kind of help, but for someone who's had to spend as many hours in the saddle as she has, she's still one of the worst riders Miles has ever seen, and at the breakneck pace Miles is setting, it's taking all of her concentration just to stay on her horse.

Surprisingly, it's Charlie who picks up the slack as his wingman. The kid's muscles have got to be screaming after nearly ten hours in the saddle out of the last twenty-four, but she keeps pace with Miles' horse without complaint. Several times, he catches her scanning her side of the road for threats, and once, she keeps him from plunging his horse through a stream that turns out to be much deeper than he'd expected. He chalks it up to younger eyes, but after that, he slows the pace a little.

Twice, Charlie drops back to check on Rachel and Danny (and Nora, probably, though neither would ever admit she needs checking on), then returns to his side. He doesn't ask for an update. Danny's tougher than he looks if he survived four months on the road with Neville; Nora's ridden on enough campaigns with him that Miles knows this is just how it goes with her; and there's no way in hell Rachel wants his help, whether or not she needs it.

A wave of blind fury at Bass takes Miles almost completely by surprise. But before he can ponder that bit of unsettlingness, his horse stumbles, nearly throws him, and he's forced to put all of his concentration back on riding. Charlie sucks in a sudden gasp as Miles barely manages to keep himself and his horse upright – and sometime, he's got to talk to that kid about wearing her emotions on her sleeve – but finally, the horse finds its feet with him still on its back.

He pulls to a halt a second later. Charlie rides up close enough to knock stirrups with him, and he's about to tell her to give the horses some room before they both get hung up in each other's tack when she taps him on the arm and points. Miles squints.

Trees, trees, fallen log, couple of rusted out cars – Bass had taken to calling them " _car_ casses" about a year into the Blackout and acted like it was the funniest joke anyone had ever heard... – tall grass, another fallen log, more trees… He can't see what Charlie's seeing, but she's still pointing, so he listens instead.

And he can't articulate it, but there's something wrong with the way the wind moves through that tall grass.

They dismount in tandem – Miles to the off side of his horse to avoid being sandwiched between their two mounts – and the rest of the group follows suit. In relative silence – so, one notch below bullhorns announcing their presence – they lead the horses behind the cover of a thick copse of trees.

Miles flashes Nora a series of clear hand signals – _Stay here; watch that way; we'll circle around –_ then motions to Charlie: _Lead the way, kid._ She nods like she's trying to salute him with it, and Miles winces, because he's seen that look on one too many eager recruits. But then Charlie grins like the sun and draws her crossbow, and she's off into the woods like she was born in them. Which, really, given how young she was when the lights went out, isn't far from the truth.

They move through the woods as twin shadows, silent even to Miles' own ears, and it should turn his stomach that his niece is becoming about half as terrifying as he is, but instead he's grinning in the darkness and he hates himself for it. Slowly, they slip up to the back of the patch of tall grass –

– and there, low to the ground, Miles can just make out a shadow, big enough to be a man. Charlie aims her crossbow; looks at Miles. He springs…

…and scares up a goddamn deer. The thing's so startled it jumps right at his face, shoulder-checking him flat onto his ass as it leaps past. From his back, he hears the _twang_ and the slight rattle of Charlie's crossbow firing, and a soft _thunk_ as the bolt hits home.

When he rises a moment later, rubbing his shoulder, Charlie's bent over the downed deer, tugging her crossbow bolt out of its forehead. Her shoulders are shaking, and he actually puts a hand on her arm in concern before he realizes she's shaking with silent – but hysterical – laughter.

"Yeah, okay, kid, barrel of laughs…"

It takes her a full ten seconds to compose herself before she wheezes out: "Miles, you should have seen your face…" Apparently, the recollection is too much, because she's wracked with silent laughter all over again.

"All right, yeah. Hysterical. Comedy hour's over, Charlie. Prep that deer, and we'll – "

Something big hits him from behind, latching onto his neck and shoulders and rattling him hard enough to knock loose his sense of direction. That little warning tickle at the base of his brain tells him he's about to be in unbelievable pain, but he's got at least a half a second before that happens.

And Miles Matheson can do a lot in half a second.

He's got no idea which direction he's moving, but he twists, pushing against the weight on his back and drawing his short sword as he falls. With one backwards thrust, he buries it in his attacker. There's an unearthly scream and a rush of hot breath near his ear and _FUCK_ , _that's a mountain lion_. Holy hell, he'd better have killed it, or Charlie –

His half second's up right about the time he hits the ground – stars exploding behind his eyes, a sound like a freight train in his ears, and a fire like the base of his skull's been flayed open and somebody's jabbing at it with a live electrical wire; all the familiar symptoms of catastrophically disastrous injury. He'll have another five to ten seconds now before whatever it is that just happened gets bad enough to stop him from moving.

Fortunately, he's pretty much an expert at ignoring blinding pain. He twists the sword hilt as hard as he can until the big cat shifts and pulls away from his back, then rolls the rest of the way over and frees his other sword from its scabbard. Dimly, he catalogues that the grass under is back is tacky and soaked with something that's most likely a lot of his blood.

Then the mountain lion leaps at him again.

A crossbow bolt suddenly blooms out of its chest, and Charlie sprints around his left side, aiming another shot – _get the hell out of here, kid_ – but the cat twists to see her as it lands on him, and his first sword thrust misses its throat by an inch. He jams the hilt between its teeth as it snaps at his throat, and is rewarded with a deafening snarl and a spray of blood and saliva.

For a terrifying second, his right arm won't respond to his brain, and he briefly considers the absurd and desperate idea of trying to kick the lion in the balls – and wouldn't Bass piss his pants laughing at that? – but then someone – Charlie? And if so, how the hell has she gotten there so fast? – grabs the short sword out of his hand...

...and drives it home into the cat's heart.

He's got to make sure it's dead, so he rolls out from under the thing and cuts its throat with the sword arm that's still working.

Forcing his feet under him, Miles straightens to a shaky stand and looks across the dead mountain lion at the figure holding his short sword.

It's Jason Neville.

God, does he wish he had time to untangle _that_ mystery of convenient timing, but the seconds are ticking and first he's got to make sure:

"Charlie?" His own voice sounds odd. Sticky.

Charlie appears in front of him next to Jason, and it's a testament to how bad he must look that she barely spares pretty boy a glance. Instead, she stares wide-eyed at him across the body of the dead cat. "Uncle Miles?"

Hell, she hasn't called him "Uncle" since she'd been trying to play on his familial heartstrings when they first met. He must really look like shit.

"You okay, kid?"

She blinks at him, then coughs out a single, disbelieving laugh. "You're kidding me, right? Miles, you look like…"

He doesn't get to hear what he looks like, because suddenly, his five to ten seconds are up. The pain doesn't really get any worse; his body just stops responding to his directions. One moment he's standing there, Charlie's laugh still ringing in his ears, and the next, he's in the dark.


	14. Four-Wheel Drive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: The second section of this chapter contains (extremely) brief (read: three half-sentence) M-rated flashbacks. Just didn't want to catch you all by surprise "Game of Thrones"-style. ;-) Now you've been warned. Also, language = BAD. Bad bad very bad. If you've read this far, you're probably cool with it, so this is the last time I'll warn y'all.

_Four-Wheel Drive_

Charlie's world crumples with Miles' body. He's grinning and wavering on his feet, and for a just a second, she thinks he's okay, because he's always okay; he's always been okay before – and then Miles drops to the ground like someone cut his strings, and Charlie's whole world collapses.

" _Miles_!" That's got to be her screaming, but she doesn't recognize her own voice until Jason claps an iron hand over her mouth and an arm around her waist. He's right – someone will hear them – but she's past caring and he's trapping her there, and she's got to get to Miles, so she bites down on Jason's hand as hard as she can, driving her elbow into his solar plexus just like Miles taught her, and Jason lets go.

She's on her knees next to Miles the next moment. It's so dark his body is half in shadow, but she can see that his coat is torn to shreds from his shoulders to his waist. She reaches out a tentative hand to the back of the coat, palm first…and pulls it back soaked in blood. And she's seen plenty of awful shit in the last six months, but this is _Miles_. She ducks her head for a second, fighting back the urge to gag.

And then her stomach drops out entirely, because it's so dark and he's so still and oh, _shit_ is he not breathing? She's terrified to roll him onto that filleted back, but she grabs the shoulder of the blood-soaked coat and drags her uncle onto his side. Her hand leaves a smear of blood across his three-day-old stubble as she bends down and tilts her ear as close to his mouth as she can, trying to hear past her own desperately thudding heart.

_Please, Miles…_ Charlie's hands shake and her back aches with coiled tension as she holds her position, waiting for – _there_. A soft exhale echoes in her ear, and she nearly bursts into tears with relief. "Just keep breathing. Please," she whispers, and she's not sure if she's begging Miles or praying. It feels like praying.

She straightens as Jason kneels next to her, across Miles' body. His eyes flick quickly to Miles' injuries, and then away. "You guys have a med kit?" he murmurs. And she's suddenly immensely thankful that he's decided just to be a soldier right now and not…whatever else he is to her. Soldier is easier. She needs to be that right now, too: analytical, decisive, confident.

"Nora has it. Other side of the road, in the trees."

Jason nods, and vanishes into the darkness.

Charlie looks over Miles' wounds again, and quickly strips her jacket from her shoulders. Be analytical. It's probably just the blood loss that's caused him to pass out. If she can stop the bleeding, he'll probably be okay. Probably. Her jacket isn't the most absorbent material in the world, but it'll have to do. Only about half of the wounds are still bleeding, so she chooses the worst ones, and applies pressure.

Then she waits, keeping up the pressure as she waits for Jason. Under her hands, Miles takes one shallow breath, and then another. And another.

Another.

Another…

**...**

Nora nearly runs face-first into the Neville kid in the dark.

They'd just gotten the spooking horses under control after that unearthly snarl – mostly thanks to Rachel and Danny – when she'd heard Charlie's suddenly cut off scream. Rachel had stood stock still, holding three horses' reins and looking at Danny, so Nora had shoved her reins into the kid's hands, shouldered the rifle Harry had given her, and bolted into the woods.

Jason – that's his name – bounces off her shoulder and then immediately raises his hands in surrender before she even levels the rifle at his chest.

"Nora?" She nods.

"It's Miles."

_Oh._

They have to go back for the med kit, and Rachel looks like she'd shoot Jason on sight if she had a gun. Danny just stands fractionally closer to his horse and says nothing.

There's obviously no fucking way Rachel is staying with the horses, so all four of them plus five horses hurry across the road and into the clearing behind the tall grass – heavy on speed, light on stealth.

Passingly, Nora registers the corpses of two big animals – deer, mountain lion. Oh, shit. A _mountain lion_?

Charlie's crouched in the center of the clearing, between the corpse of the mountain lion and the deer, and Nora can see a dark form on the ground behind her, but Charlie's too close to it to make out –

And then Charlie hears them and turns and rises, and the whole grisly tableau is bared to Nora's eyes.

Miles looks like he's dead.

The trampled grass is slick with dark blood, and it looks like Charlie's been using her own jacket in an attempt to staunch Miles' bleeding.

Nora's stomach flip-flops into her chest, and she shoves it back down with a violent surge of anger. She – and maybe Jason, who hasn't earned her trust – is the only one with any sort of combat medical training, so she'd sure as hell better be able to lock up her personal feelings for a second, because if she falls apart, Miles is gone.

She shoves _He might be gone already_ into a dark little corner of her brain and throws away the keys. Right. Assess vitals, stop bleeding, dress wounds. Don't think about being in bed with Miles five hours ago. Safe. Happy.

Nora kneels next to Charlie, opens the med kit, and begins to work. She has to literally slice the coat off Miles' back with her boot knife – _digging her nails into his back as he moves inside her_ – and when she peels the collar away, there's a set of inch-deep puncture wounds dotted across the side of Miles' neck – _gasping into his neck as one of his hands_ finally _finds her breast_ – all the way into the top of his right shoulder – _sinking_ _her_ _teeth into his corded shoulder muscle as he wraps his arms around her_ – Nora shakes her head violently, trying to clear the conflicting images.

Shit.

She really can't do this. She's not going to be able to hold it together. If she's honest with herself (like she never was with him), this is the reason Nora left Miles all those years ago. It hadn't been Bass, or the Militia, or even Miles' own rapidly blackening soul.

Really, it had just been this:

She couldn't sleep with Miles one minute, and watch him die the next.

Other guys, yeah, maybe – and it had happened before – but with Miles, she'd let herself get too invested, care too much. Maybe even love him.

She doesn't realize she's frozen until Charlie grabs the bottle of iodine Nora's holding and twists the cap, and suddenly Nora snaps, "Take it easy; that's all we have," and just like that, her head's clear and she's back in the game. Water, iodine, dressings, bandages – all the extra supplies she grabbed from Harry's house are (hopefully) going to save Miles' life.

And Nora Clayton may not believe in God, but she knows Harry Eberhart is a goddamn angel. And he'd tell her that pain is the fuel of resistance.

So she stills her shaking hands, and peels back Miles' coat.

**...**

They can't stand around here. Danny knows it from the shifting of the horses if nothing else. They're nervous. And with good reason. He hadn't spent a lot of time on horseback back at home, but he's spent all his life (that he can remember) around farm animals, and then four months on the road quietly observing a troop full of Militia cavalry horses, and he's learned to pay attention to the subtle indications – a raised head, a swiveling ear, a slight widening of the nostrils. They don't like the dead mountain lion, that's for sure.

But Danny's more concerned about the live Militia soldier. He knows Charlie (for God knows what reason) has a crush on this guy, and he's thankful – really, he honestly is – for Jason throwing her off the train, but he's still not sure if the guy is genuinely on their side, is just trying to send one giant "Screw you" message to his dad, or wants to get into Charlie's pants. As far as Danny sees it, the likelihood is two out of three that Jason has ulterior motives.

And that's assuming that the guy isn't just here to lead Neville's patrol straight to them. He doesn't think Jason would do that, but after watching his mother over the last month, Danny's given up on thinking that he knows what people will do.

Nora and Charlie are bent over Miles' body, half coated in blood – his, the mountain lion's; it's hard to tell – and Danny feels like a complete ass when for just a second, he thinks how much easier it would be if Miles died. His Dad would be ashamed of him, thinking like that.

But he's not wrong. They really can't stay here. Danny's always had a good sense of time, and he makes four and a half hours since they left the Eberhart plantation. That would make for a decent head start, except that Jason Neville's here, and someone will have noticed him go missing within, at most, forty-five minutes of his disappearance. And that someone will most likely be Jason's father.

Danny knows how Captain Neville works. (And screw calling him "Major;" he'd call him "Douchebag" if it didn't make him sound thirteen.) Neville will make Jason think he's gotten away clean. But in about half an hour, the whole patrol will be riding down their throats, and Neville will be all smiles and "Thank you for tracking them for us, son," and his sister'll give Jason that doe-eyed hurt look of betrayal and vow to hate him forever until the next time.

Danny doesn't say much out loud, but in his head, sometimes, he wonders why he didn't end up as the older sibling. He thinks ahead more – although maybe that's by virtue of growing up with a disease that kept trying to kill him every five minutes – and, quietly, he _notices_ things.

Charlie sees the black and white of life. It's why she'd just hated Maggie when Danny could see how lonely his father was and the gap that Maggie filled (not as a replacement for his mother, but just…something different, to fill the empty space, like painting a room a different color). It's why she calls him Danny when he prefers Dan, because people are either one thing or the other, and he can't be her kid brother if he's an adult in his own right.

And it's why Miles is her hero, her savior, her knight in shining armor, because he _can't_ also be the monster who imprisoned and tortured her mother – Danny's sure that's why she never broaches the subject with Mom, though it's got to be obvious to her by now – but Danny knows that Miles is _both_ , that he is all of those things – the hero _and_ the monster, the knight _and_ the villain – and the problem with Miles is (and his mother had let this slip, when she'd unloaded on Danny simply because he'd been the only one there) that you could never know which one Miles was going to be from one moment to the next.

So, his Dad would have chastised him for wishing their lives simpler by the absence of Miles. But his Dad had been more like Charlie, and Danny is more like his Mom: stuck seeing every shade of people, all mashed together, so you couldn't remove the bad from the good.

Which is why he's not surprised – as he watches his mother stand very, very still and stare at Miles' battered, motionless form – that she's crying.

**...**

Miles swims back to consciousness faster than he would have liked. Honestly, he'd been hoping for a bit more of a break. His face is plastered to the grass and someone's leaning on his back, which feels like it's taken every losing blow from every swordfight he's ever had. He gives an incoherent, "Mmmf," into the ground, hoping this will convince whoever's leaning on him to get the hell off.

"Hold still, you idiot." So that's Nora, and he must look like hell; she only calls him names when she's really and truly worried.

"Think I'm s'posed to be awake before you manhandle me like that," he manages, suggestively. Abruptly, half the weight leaves his back, and Nora snaps,

"Charlie, put pressure back on those wounds."

Oh. Miles briefly considers sewing his own mouth shut.

"Sorry, kid – "

"Shut up, Miles." Great. Pretty soon they'll both be calling him "idiot." Miles opens his eyes a fraction. The icing on the cake would be if R –

– achel Matheson's eyes are staring directly into his own, and even in the dark, with blurred vision, and from fifteen feet away, he can tell that she's crying.

She looks surprised, like she's been caught out, and spins away from him abruptly.

Holy fuck.

Holy fucking fucktastic fuck.

It is absolutely not possible that the world would be that kind to a fuck-up like him.

Rachel Matheson didn't cry when she and Ben blew up the whole goddamned world.

Rachel Matheson didn't cry when she left her children and her husband to turn herself in in Philadelphia.

Miles has only seen Rachel cry once before, _ever_ , which is why he knows this like he knows he has two hands:

Rachel Matheson only cries over one thing.

Him.


	15. Rear-View Mirror

_Rear-View Mirror_

He's babysitting a violent psychopath in a room packed full of great works of literature, and it _still_ takes Aaron Pittman less than five hours to become bored. Monroe has been silent – Unconscious? Aaron doesn't really fancy getting close enough to find out for sure – since his initial outburst, leaving Aaron alone with his thoughts. (He used to like that, but that had been when his thoughts were, you know, actually useful ideas.)

He flips through Harold's Batman comic for the third time in an hour, actually missing the horrifying little brats at his village for once. He certainly could have taught better English classes with all these books.

Maybe this is just the first time he's had an extended amount of time alone on this trip, but he's suddenly waxing all sorts of nostalgic. Ben would have told him to take a walk and get out of his head.

Obviously, that's not going to happen.

He stands, stretching, and makes a circuit of the room for the fiftieth time. Thank God it's huge, big enough that he can keep watch on Monroe out of the corner of his eye as he passes the bookshelf, a carved armoire which is locked - he'd checked earlier – the ficus, a small solid oak dining table with four padded chairs, and the two Queen beds. Miles' guitar leans against the wall in the corner. Presumably, he'd assumed it would be safer sitting here than gallivanting across the country on horseback. Aaron wonders if the same is true of himself.

Next to the guitar rests the sword belt with Monroe's double blades.

Because he's always been a terrible guitar player, and because boredom is the mother of stupidity, Aaron finds himself slowing drawing one of Monroe's swords from its sheath. Even freed from the leather, it's heavy. He raises it, point-first, toward the houseplant – ficus – _little tree_ , whatever – and practices swinging it sideways. The first swing is awkward, wobbly. He frowns. This always looked so damned easy in the games.

Briefly, he imagines rigging a Nintendo controller to a mechanism that would move the sword for him – a mechanical arm, maybe…or heck, a full-on robot. Maybe Harold could steam-power it for him. He's pretty sure he could eviscerate five or ten of Monroe's soldiers handily with that kind of a rig. He wonders if he's losing his mind.

"If you cut off your own arm, I'm going to laugh." Aaron twitches so violently he actually drops the sword with a _clang_ that hurts his ears.

"Strike that," Monroe's voice rasps from the bed, " _When_ you cut off your arm."

"Shut up." It's literally the only rejoinder Aaron can muster as he drags the sword off the ground and fumbles it back into its sheath.

Monroe snorts. "If you didn't want to put up with my shit, you shouldn't've let Miles ditch you here. What were you – last pick for the getaway team? Or did you just draw the short straw?"

It hits a little too close to home, but Aaron's not a fool, and he knows from watching Monroe pick at Miles and the others that this is just what the guy does: he's a master at finding the right words to press buttons and open up old wounds.

As usual, his only defense is some self-deprecating humor. "I just really suck at rock, paper, scissors."

Strangely, this appears to be the best thing he could have said, because Monroe actually _laughs_ and then hauls himself to a half sitting position on the bed with a pained look.

"Shit, that hurts. Miles is a fucking idiot."

Aaron nods before he realizes who he's agreeing with. Monroe grins, raking a hand through his plastered curls and fixing Aaron with a look that makes him uncomfortable. "You know why he brought me along?" he asks after a minute.

Insurance? Misplaced loyalty? Stupidity? Aaron has plenty of opinions on the subject, but he keeps his mouth shut. Monroe seems a bit unhinged when it comes to Miles – God knows Miles is enough to unhinge anybody – and it seems wise not to poke at any of his psycho buttons with a stick.

After a minute of silence, Monroe switches subjects abruptly. "I can teach you how to do that, you know." It takes Aaron a second to realize he's talking about the swords in the corner. He must be wearing his "you've got to be fucking kidding me" face, because Monroe adds,

"You're fat as hell; you could use the exercise. And I'm bored as hell; I could use the entertainment. I mean, what else are we going to do for six weeks?"

"Thanks, but I think this is enough hell for me already."

Monroe eyes Aaron silently for a second. Then he says, "Miles would fall flat on his ass in surprise."

Aaron looks around the room – at the ficus, the chairs, the bookshelf, and the thrice-read Batman comic – until his gaze swings back to the swords. What else _are_ they going to do for six weeks? (Answer: Read a lot and then probably kill each other.) Shit. Is he really so mad at Miles that he's about to volunteer to learn swordplay from _Sebastian Monroe_?

Apparently, yes. "Flat on his ass? That seems like a bit of an overpromise, Monroe –"

There's a barely imperceptible wince Aaron almost misses, except that it's followed by:

"I think you'd better call me Bass. Or Brett? Whatever the hell they were calling me. Wouldn't want our secret host/leader of the underground rebellion to know he's got the President of the Monroe Republic locked in his basement, would we?" He grins again – but this time, Aaron can tell it's a cover-up for his very real fear of exactly that happening.

Then Bass adds, "Especially since, you know, you lied to him about it," and suddenly, Aaron feels a lot less sorry for him.

So Monroe – Bass – Brett – oh, whatever – had clearly heard every conversation they'd had since walking into Harold's house, which means he'd been feigning unconsciousness the whole time. Lovely. Interesting that Miles had bought it, although he'd probably just been too preoccupied being worried and guilty to figure it out. And of course Monroe – Brett – _Bass_ – had capitalized on that. This guy's a master manipulator.

Pushing that niggling concern to the back of his mind, Aaron crosses the room and picks up Bass's swords. This ought to be interesting – assuming "interesting" actually means "terrifying"…

…

There are very few ways to kill someone and make it look like an accident. You'd think there'd be a million, but Bass – and Miles, before, and he was better at it – have spent plenty of time brainstorming and experimenting with different ways over the past fifteen years, and the truth is, there just aren't that many ways that people actually believe.

Bass had been scared as fuck when he'd spun the story of Rachel's accidental death for Miles. He'd spent weeks planning and re-planning and scrapping those plans and planning it again in his head, and even then he'd had to pour every ounce of his anger at Miles into not shaking like a piss-pants recruit when he'd shown him the "body."

But Miles had bought it, and for a second, Bass had felt a thrill of triumph – elation that he was finally, _finally_ one-up on Miles – and then it had faded almost immediately to a choking, throat-clawing fear that Miles would find out, somehow. Because he would, and he'd come for Bass with those swords and those flat, dark eyes and he'd finally finish what he'd –

Bass digs his fingers into his injured leg on purpose, using the spike of pain that shoots from his shin to his hip to short-circuit _that_ mental shit-storm. Miles _had_ found out – albeit eight years later, but time must have dulled his fury, because he'd shot Bass instead of killing him. One of them is a sentimental fool, but sometimes Bass can't tell which one.

His obese babysitter is staring at him strangely, and Bass blinks, thinking back ten seconds, and realizes it's because he's let out a hiss of pain. He needs to get out of his head. Another reason teaching Fat-Ass to swordfight is a good idea. At least it'll keep him distracted.

At least until his leg heals, he "accidentally" stabs Aaron while they're "practicing," and then Harold loans him a horse and provisions to "take the body back for a proper burial."

 _That's_ how you kill someone and make it look like an accident. It's a long con, Miles – look it up. After all, Bass isn't planning on hanging around to explain it to him when he gets back.

He looks at Aaron, who's fumbling around with his short sword, trying to get it out of the sheath and mumbling, "If I figure this part out, do I level up?"

Bass snorts, despite himself. This is the kind of guy he would have shoved in a locker back in high school, but it's been so long since anybody's had the balls to shoot the breeze with him about pre-Blackout life that he actually finds Aaron sort of funny. Maybe he should bring him back to Philadelphia with him as a kind of court jester. Bass glances at the cabinet in front of him where a TV would have been back in a real hotel, and hears himself say, "Damn, I miss video games. Did you ever play Halo?"

Aaron's finally managed to draw the short sword – though he's holding it like a dead fish – and he raises an eyebrow at Bass. "I was more of a World of Warcraft guy – "

"Nerd gamer," Bass retorts automatically, and then thinks those words probably haven't come out of his mouth in fifteen years.

" – but I played some Black Ops." _Damn_ , he misses video games. He and Miles had spent an appalling amount of late-night hours crammed onto the couch in his Mom's basement, talking shit and playing through hours of campaigns and even more hours of multiplayer battles, with and against each other. Probably at least a third of the reason they'd been so successful as generals together (the other two thirds consisted of tours number one and two, respectively). Probably also why Bass hadn't had more girlfriends in high school. Well, that, and Emma, but he's been doing a damn good job not thinking about her, so he reins in that line of thought and says:

"Okay, point in your favor, but you're still a nerd."

Aaron looks down at his less than athletic physique, and then back up at Bass. "I don't think anyone's arguing that."

Bass snorts again. Maybe it's the pain making him loopy, but this guy is reminding him more and more of Miles, minus the angst. Self-deprecating plus snarky. Of course, that's where the similarities end. You could fit three of Miles in Aaron, and Bass bets Aaron is shit at tactics.

He's also shit at swordplay.

Right, the plan. Bass hauls himself even further up in the bed, dragging his crippled leg after him, and jams a pillow between his back and the headboard.

"All right," he snaps. "Stance. Feet shoulder width apart; now step your right foot forward, toe straight, and leave your left foot behind at a forty-five degree angle – "

Aaron tries to position his feet and mostly fails.

"No. If you're doing it right, your heels will be almost in line with each other – "

Aaron rearranges his feet again, and looks up. "How's this, Monroe – "

Bass hisses in irritation. "Still wrong. And if you can't remember to call me Bass, let's pick something you _can_ remember before someone overhears you."

Aaron looks at his feet again, stumbles once as he tries to line up his heels, then finally gets it right.

"Good." Bass says like it's not really. "Now bend your knees." On a whim, he adds, "In front of you there's a dark elf with a sword – "

Aaron rolls his eyes. "Ha. Ha. I cast magic missile into the darkness. That's not helping." But apparently it is, because suddenly he looks a little more serious. And he's actually bending his knees. In fact, as long as he doesn't move, he almost looks like he knows what he's doing. Well, what the hell. He'd meant it as a way to take out his irritation on Miles leaving him with Fatty the Babysitter, but since Bass is already barreling down Nerd Lane…

"The dark elf raises the Shield of Deflecting – "

"Deflection," Aaron corrects sharply, raising the sword in an overly dramatic manner that Bass really hopes is a joke.

"That's really a thing? I was just screwing around. Tuck your elbow in. Point of the sword toward your enemy's face. You don't want that dark elf to suck out your soul or whatever they do." The ex-Google exec glares at him over his glasses, and Bass honest-to-God _chuckles_. When the hell did this become fun?

He reminds himself that he's planning on killing Aaron. This is a temporary – and necessary – ruse to create the infrastructure for his escape.

But he supposes he's had fun doing worse things.

Aaron has turned to face him, and is saying something Bass misses. "Huh?"

"I said: 'You're the worst Dungeon Master I've ever had.'"

"Can't say I've ever been anybody's worst before." Miles would have laughed at the innuendo, and suddenly there's an ache in Bass's chest – one that he shies away from examining too closely. Aaron just blinks, oblivious, and moves back into position.

Well, sort of into position. Bass shoves the covers aside, wishing he could just fucking stand up and _show_ this idiot the right stance. Of course, if he could do that, he'd be hell and gone from here already. He groans. "Your feet are wrong again. The dark elf chops your head off, and you die. Game over."

Game over. Bass hopes that's not some sort of prescient commentary on his life.

Aaron lumbers to a full standing position, stretching his knees and letting the sword point drop toward the floor. "How long before I respawn?"

And suddenly, this isn't fun anymore. Bass misses Halo; he misses Mountain Dew and television and steak fries and fast cars.

He misses a world where no one knew his name.

"…Bass?" Aaron's voice, but in Bass's head, for just a second, it sounds like Miles. He scrubs his fingers through his hair. Shit, he must be losing it. He's been doing this President of the Republic thing too long without a break. At least Aaron's finally remembered not to call him Monroe.

Maybe this is what he needs. A break. Just a short one. Five and a half weeks. Five and a half weeks to be just Bass, and not President Monroe. Five and a half weeks to talk about pizza and video games and not about supply lines, uprisings, political maneuverings, or executions. Fine. He can relax and be that guy for five and a half weeks – the one whose biggest concern was whether he was getting laid that night.

Bass leans back against the headboard, face slowing creasing into a smile. "Respawn in twenty seconds. Then we learn footwork."

Five and a half weeks. Then back to reality.

But for now, he's going to enjoy the game.


	16. Mileage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's not the years; it's the mileage." - Raiders of the Lost Ark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original author's note for this chapter: This update is for Thinktink2, who has been very graciously poking me and reminding me that it's well past time for another chapter. :-D Also, it's been so long that I no longer remember who asked me for a little bit of Jarlie, but I _did_ remember that I promised you some, so there's some in this chapter. ;-) As usual, "Revolution" ain't mine, and neither is the brief Robert Frost quote from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

_Mileage_

All of this is taking too long, and every inch of skin on Jason's body is itching with pent-up tension by the time Nora and Charlie _finally_ haul Miles to his feet.

He looks bad, and if there was any way Jason could convince Charlie to just leave her uncle there, he would. His father (probably) wouldn't kill him until Miles led him to Monroe, and in the meantime, Jason could get Charlie safely - and quickly - away.

Then Miles shakes off Nora and Charlie and saunters up to Jason like he's not wearing the shredded, blood-soaked remains of a coat. Okay. Jason will give him that he's one insanely tough bastard. "Jason." It's a greeting that's both acknowledgement and test – one that Jason is gratingly familiar with from his own father.

"My fa– Major Neville – won't be far behind us," he answers Miles' unspoken question. Jeez, the whole clearing smells like blood, but Miles most of all. It's a good thing his father isn't riding with tracking dogs, or they'd all be royally screwed. "I slipped ahead to warn you, but he sent trackers out, and they can't be more than a quarter hour away."

He glances at Charlie, but she's either avoiding his eyes or studying the blood spatter on the ground, and he tries to ignore the little pang of hurt he feels over that.

There's a brief silence before Miles grimaces and tries to speak –

– and Rachel cuts him off. "I know where we can go."

Miles doesn't turn – and maybe the tough thing is an act, and it's really taking all of his energy just to keep standing there – but he waits in silence for Rachel's suggestion.

"I have…friends –" Jason doesn't miss the slight emphasis or the way Rachel shifts her eyes briefly to him before finishing the second half of her sentence. " – in New York City."

"New _York_?" Charlie voices Jason's exact thought.

There's no way Miles can ride to New York in that condition. _No one_ could. Of course, Jason doesn't say that. Instead, he just offers, quietly: "That's about seventy miles' ride from here." He hasn't earned enough trust with any of this group to offer more than the facts, unvarnished by his opinion. (Which is that Rachel's idea is insane. In good health, on good horses, thirty miles a day, in six to eight hours, is pretty standard for a small Militia patrol, which means that they'll have to outpace that to stay ahead of his father's men. And that doesn't seem likely.)

Slowly, Miles turns to face Rachel. The two lock eyes for eight or nine seconds, having some sort of wordless conversation Jason can't even begin to fathom. Then Miles limps over to his horse, takes the reins from Danny, and growls a single, two-word order: "Mount up."

Rachel climbs up onto her horse immediately, but for a second, no one else moves. Nora's voice, weighted with unspoken meaning, breaks the silence of the pause: "That's a long ride, Miles."

In answer, Miles buries one white-knuckled hand in his horse's mane, reaches a foot into the stirrup, and hauls himself up by what has to be sheer force of will. Jason avoids wincing only by looking away at Charlie and Nora. As the former General settles into the saddle, he snaps in a dry, tense voice, "Let's go. You're not making it any shorter."

Jason turns to find Miles' horse bearing down on him, and as he sidesteps quickly, Miles pulls to a halt. "Got a horse?"

Jason nods, and jerks his head to indicate the direction. "Not far."

Miles gives a "good soldier" nod. "Go get it. You're on point."

It's not exactly "watch our backs," but it's still more trust than Jason had expected. He takes a couple of jogging steps before Miles' gravelly voice stops him.

"Hey, kid."

He turns to find Miles staring intently at him, brown eyes glittering in the darkness, and for a second, he can't tell if he's about to be thanked or threatened. Then Miles holds out an open hand, palm up. "Sword."

Ah. So, neither. Jason spins the short sword he's still holding and hands it back to Miles, hilt first. Miles sheathes the sword, Jason turns to go – and then he stumbles forward as Miles kicks him lightly in the shoulder with the toe of one boot.

"What the hell – " He whirls back angrily, but apparently the kick was Miles' equivalent of a pat on the back, because the next words out of the former General's mouth are:

"Nice moves, kid." For a second, Jason can understand how this guy was the revered and worshipped General of the whole Militia, because that one little phrase, from General Matheson's mouth, fills him with a sudden, unexpected surge of pride.

Then he considers how much of an understatement it actually is. "'Nice moves?'" Seriously? "I _saved your life_."

There's a half-second pause before Miles grunts, "Yeah, well, don't get cocky about it," and nudges his horse past Jason.

He'll probably never fathom this guy's arrogance. He takes a step in the direction his horse is tied as Miles passes. Then he pauses again as he feels a light _tap_ on the shoulder of his leather jacket. He brushes at it with two fingers – _sticky, hot_. Blood.

Holy shit. He'd figured Nora and Charlie had gotten that bleeding stopped better than that. Miles looks like he can't even feel it. Jason has heard all the campfire stories about this man, of course (whispered quickly, nervously, behind Monroe's back, but always with that undercurrent of worshipful awe). He'd never put much stock in them – which, in retrospect, was probably the reason he'd been the only volunteer to track down Matheson via Charlie all those months ago – but it occurs to him now that maybe Miles actually has a little, teeny tiny bit of a right to be so arrogant.

He wipes the blood from his jacket and wonders if this will go down in history as the mission that finally killed General Indestructible Matheson.

**…**

The kid finally jogs off to get his horse, and Miles blinks back a couple spots from his vision and focuses on breathing. One, two. One, two. One… Two…. The spots clear, and he grins and turns to look for Charlie, embracing the rush of fire that shoots across his back. Pain is good. Pain equals conscious.

He'd always been shit at math, but that one he's got down.

Plus, he's learned this on campaign before – "It's important not to look like you're dying in front of the men?" was the way Bass had paraphrased Miles' insistence on riding out to congratulate the troops with a hole through his abdomen – and he's figured out that the trick isn't ignoring the pain – it's making it your new normal.

Actually, that had been pretty much the trick with everything since the lights went out.

Miles heels his horse forward – at least both his legs still work; he's still having trouble with that left arm – to the rest of the group, and stops to address them like they're his goddamn cavalry.

"Nora, you're on rearguard with me." God, his voice sounds terrible. Like he's talking through a bucketful of phlegm. "Charlie, you're up front with Jason – make sure he doesn't lead us in a goddamned circle." She grins brightly, and he momentarily reconsiders his decision to put Romeo and Juliet on point together.

"Danny, Rache – " he blames his sticky throat for the fact he can't make it through her whole name " – follow Charlie. You hear a gunshot, swords, yelling, _anything_ behind you, and the four of you run like hell."

Surprisingly, it's Danny who eyes him assessingly. "What about you and Nora?"

Nora comes to his rescue, for which he's actually grateful, since it seems to be getting harder and harder to talk. She gives Danny an even look and a humorless grin. "We don't need you in the way when we're dicing up Neville's men into little pieces."

Miles nods, and that's that. The six of them move out in loose formation. For the first couple of hours, it's not so bad. Nora doesn't try to talk to him – and he's immeasurably thankful he's got one professional on this damn trip – and Miles counts steps, counts breaths, and focuses on the way each of his horse's individual footfalls shoots pain up into the base of his skull. After an hour, he's managed to reach that blanket haze of half-dissociated agony where all of his senses still work – he can hear the crackle of sticks under Nora's horse's hooves, behind him; smell horse sweat and blood and caked dirt – except for his eyesight.

He can see, of course – the dark shapes of trees, edges blurred in the moonlight; Danny's horse as it slows and wanders in front of him for the fiftieth time – but his eyes and his brain have gotten together to toy with him, and he's starting to have to decide what's real by whether or not his _horse_ reacts to it.

For instance, that eight-foot lion, crouching in the bushes over there – his horse hasn't flared a nostril, so he's going to shelve that under "not real." That halo of gold around Rachel's hair in the moonlight – well, probably not real either, but it's pretty to look at, all the same. That gleam of light off a soldier's musket – his heart jumps, but his horse doesn't, and when he looks again, it's just a spider-web covered tree limb. Shit. At least his hearing is still functioning. He focuses in on Nora's horse, walking behind him: _crackle, snap, crunch, crackle, crackle, crunch, snap_. The sound is actually pretty damn relaxing, and as the shadows continue to coalesce into hallucinated monsters, Miles wishes he could just close his eyes.

And it's funny what your brain will dredge up at unexpected times, because suddenly, Miles is thinking of the only line he can ever remember from the only poem he'd ever liked.

_And miles to go before I sleep…_

Sixty-five more miles, at least. Miles forces his eyes open, and the hallucinations crowd right back in.

**…**

The bridge crossing at Trenton is both easier and more harrowing than Jason had anticipated. Easier, because they basically waltz right through the Militia bridge guards with no resistance. More harrowing, because he has to do it all with a bag over his head.

It had been Miles' idea. Rumor ran faster than horses, and, between the "do not engage" order and mention of a "high profile prisoner," every outpost and crossing guard between Philly and the border was tossing around the rumor that _Miles Matheson_ had actually _kidnapped_ _General Monroe_.

All of which led to Jason – the only one both wearing a Militia uniform and _not_ expected to be part of their group – with a bag over his head and his hands "tied" in front of him, pretending to be Sebastian fucking Monroe.

Charlie's gun (borrowed from Nora) pokes into his ribs a little harder as they ride up to (presumably) the guard post at the bridge and stop. He'd been touched, actually, that she'd insisted on being the one to pony his horse and hold the gun – it demonstrated a level of (probably justified) concern that her uncle might decide to just shoot him in the side for fun. This pleasant train of thought is interrupted by a rapid-fire clicking of muskets being cocked – Jason counts at least five – and a voice barking out, "Halt! Who goes there?"

"Evenin', boys." Miles drawls in return. "Don't you recognize your own Commander-in-Chief?"

"Probably hard with that bag over his head," Nora's cheerful voice pipes up. "Maybe I should shoot it off?"

Jason hears the hammer-click of another gun, this one much closer to his head. It's suddenly stifling inside the bag – or maybe he's just sweating – and he sucks the black fabric closer to his mouth, trying to draw in a little fresh air and mentally running through his next sequence of moves if this goes south. Untwist hands, pull off bag, grab Charlie's gun and fire in – he listens for a moment – _those_ three directions, then knock Charlie off her horse and out of the line of return fire…

"Nah, no need for that." Miles' words are so casual, it's almost easy to miss that they're spoken through gritted teeth. "'Cause they're going to let us pass – aren't you, boys?" There's a barely audible _clink_ and a creak of saddle leather, and that must be Miles leaning forward and casually resting a hand on his swords.

Sweat trickles down Jason's forehead into his eyes, and the bag chafes against his close-cropped hair. Actually, now that he thinks about it – and he wishes he hadn't – the thing is actually making his whole face itch. His horse shifts under him – an oddly surprising sensation when he hadn't been the one asking it to move – as Charlie's horse starts forward. The sound of the hoof beats changes from _thump, thump_ to a low, hollow _clang_ as they move from the dirt road onto the bridge.

They're all the way across and into the dirt on the other side before Jason stops waiting to hear the sound of musket fire and feel a round or two sink into his back. He lets out a shaky breath and then swears a muffled curse into the bag as Charlie lurches both of their horses into a bouncy trot, forcing him to grab at the saddle horn momentarily with his loosely bound hands. Apparently wearing a bag over your head screws up your balance.

They ride what Jason estimates is another mile before Miles calls a halt and Charlie pulls the bag off his head. He blinks in the moonlight and has just enough time to focus on her blue, blue eyes before she leans in and plants a kiss right on his lips. He freezes for a second, then he leans into it, wrestling his hands out of the stupid, entangling ropes so he can tangle them instead in her perfect, wheat-blonde hair. His whole body tenses like a drawn bowstring – and then his damned horse takes that as a cue and sidesteps, pulling him away from that gorgeous mouth. Charlie beams in the moonlight, and he honestly hasn't got a clue why she kissed him – celebration, maybe? – until she leans in and whispers, "Wanted to do that earlier. Thank you for saving Miles."

Great. Fantastic. _Miles._ Before he can fully explore the depressing train of thought that is Charlie's childlike awe of her douchebag uncle, the man himself interrupts their moment:

"Yeah, well, if I'd known it was going to result in _this_ , I'd have told him to let me get eaten." Miles gives Charlie a pointed look, and she shrinks back into her saddle, blushing furiously.

Another five and a half hours' ride brings them to the Raritan River crossing, and Charlie is just "tying" Jason's hands up for a second game of "Look! We kidnapped General Monroe!" when a series of enormous, ground-shaking rumbles spooks every one of their horses. Nora flings herself off her crazed steed, cursing as she hits the ground and rolls to her feet, Danny grabs Rachel's reins as her mare tries to take off into the darkness, and he misses whatever Miles is doing to stay on his horse, because Charlie's gelding crashes into him, smashing his knee into Charlie's, and his own horse stumbles sideways and nearly falls before he manages to lean, haul on a rein, and help the poor thing stay upright.

"They blew the bridges!" Nora spits as soon as they've got their horses under control, and she looks ready to blow something up herself in retaliation.

They wouldn't. Not for this. Really? "Both of them?" Jason asks, not quite believing her. She doesn't bother to answer him, which shows how much she thinks of his question.

Then Rachel says, so quietly Jason almost can't hear her, "They can't let us cross, but they can't let us kill Monroe either. It's the only logical solution: take away the option to cross, and they take away our reason to threaten Monroe."

It's probably better if Jason never tells Charlie exactly what he thinks of her mother, because honestly, he's pretty sure that the woman's idea of what is and isn't a "logical solution" is roughly on parallel with General Monroe's.

"Can we go around?" Danny rarely speaks up, and when he does, Jason is always reminded that, despite their being only a few years' removed in age, Charlie's little brother is about fifteen years younger in life experience.

"They'll just blow the other ones." Miles' voice is very, very tired. "Jeremy's thinking like Monroe now. He'll blow every bridge we come to if he has to cut off the whole of the northeastern Republic to do it."

No one actually says, _So, what do we do?_ , but the question hangs unspoken in the air.

Miles looks through the trees out at the dark expanse of river in silence for a _long_ time. He's so still, and so quiet, that it's a little eerie, and Jason is just starting to think maybe he's actually died right there on his horse when Miles gives a decisive grunt.

"We'll swim it."

Well, damn. He'd thought _Rachel_ was the crazy one.


	17. Crash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original author's note for THIS chapter contained a rather strongly worded promise never to abandon this fic, "no matter how long it takes between updates." Two and a half years later, I guess I'm finally making good on that promise.
> 
> Also, I must leave my original shoutout to winteriscoming3, who used the word "derptastic" to describe Aaron and Monroe's adventures. They're in this chapter because of you.

_Crash_

Teaching a fat guy to swordfight is about as funny as it sounds. Aaron had taken to calling Bass "Professor Xavier" after the third time Bass lamented not being able to just get up and whip his ass into shape with the flat of his blade (and again, Miles would have made innuendo hell out of that one). But despite (okay, maybe because of) his dork-tastic protégé's lack of coordination and constant litany of X-Men references, Bass had managed to teach the overweight bastard a passable amount of almost-sort of-passable footwork.

And, what the hell, he might actually have had a little bit of fun doing it.

Aaron's gasping like a landed fish on the other bed, and Bass can't resist needling him: "When was the last time you did that much exercise all in one go? Climbing the stairs to your private jet?"

For a second, Aaron doesn't answer, and Bass actually jerks his head in the other guy's direction in alarm. If the ex-Google-genius has a heart attack and dies down here right now, Bass's escape plan is shot to hell.

Aaron opens one eye and side-eyes him, hard. "I'll have you know," he manages, then has to stop to take several deep breaths, "I may look out of shape, but I've walked halfway across this goddamn country, and I _definitely_ have a plus ten to stamina."

"A line that'll get any girl in bed with you," Bass observes dryly.

Aaron actually chuckles at that, and looks like he's about to respond when there's a _rap_ at the door. Bass is about to signal him to shut up and wait for their visitors to identify themselves when Aaron says, "Yeah?"and forces himself off the bed, probably not realizing he's still gripping the sword. Fanfuckingtastic. Aaron Pittman, his barely-trained, overweight bodyguard.

"Aaron?" It's Harold. Bass sighs and does the only thing he can that might give him any sort of advantage – he closes his eyes and pretends to be unconscious. There's a soft _creak_ as the bookcase door slides open, and then Harold says, "He still out?"

There's a pause, during which Bass can imagine Aaron looking over at him in badly-concealed surprise and then nodding, unconvincingly. "Um, yep."

Harold sighs. "The patrol moved on faster than I would've thought. Couldn't gather much, but they were hell bent on catching Matheson _tonight_." His footsteps move a bit further into the room, and Bass breathes slower, because paranoia has been his constant companion lately, and Harold's tone is a little too familiar.

"So they're gone?" Aaron's relief is as obvious as it is idiotic.

Harold stops moving – Bass can no longer hear the soft tap of his shoes against the floor – and continues as if he hasn't heard Aaron: "They're riding with Major Tom Neville – rabid lapdog to President Monroe himself. You know what kind of shit you guys are in?"

Another pause. Aaron's probably shaking his head or just standing there looking dumb…and _fuck_. There it is. That tingle Bass only feels right before –

"Well, _I_ do," Harold says, and there's the sound of a 9mm cocking, and Bass throws himself off the bed.

**...**

Miles had spent nearly five minutes talking them through the river swim – an eternity of words for him, especially in his current condition, and an indication of just how worried he was about this plan. Rachel had quietly ignored Nora's piercing stare, Charlie's widened eyes, and Jason's snort (though the young man had managed to expressively combine both his awe of Miles and his utter disbelief that they'd all make it out of this alive). Danny had merely looked from Miles to Rachel and silently dismounted his horse to check his tack. Jason had done the same after a moment, helping both Charlie and Nora with their horses – tossing out unnecessary gear, tightening cinches and breast collars, and knotting the ends of their reins around the saddle horns.

Now, Rachel stands next to her own mount, staring into the whorl of hair where its neck meets its shoulder. She's thinking about the whorl and the river water and the way that mountain lion's snarl had rippled through the forest, and doesn't even realize how still she's standing until she hears Jason approaching behind her, presumably to help her with her own tack.

Miles limps into the boy's path before he can offer. (And in this, as always, he's interposing himself between Rachel and…well, everything.) "Narrowest crossing, fewest rocks. Scout," he growls at the kid, and Jason moves off, like that, to walk the river edge.

Miles moves in, close enough for her to taste copper on her tongue as she smells the blood on his coat, and, silently, sets to work sorting out her tack.

"I can do that, Miles." He doesn't shrug, but she can read his response in the lack of one. She reaches out a hand, hesitant, but there's hardly a place on his arm that isn't torn and bloody, and briefly, insanely, she thinks that this is what it must be like to try to touch _her_ (though it's not her skin that's marred by the last eight years, never the _outside…_ ).

So she withdraws, observes (it's what she's good at – best at, really – a natural inclination honed by so many years of necessary practice). And then she sees:

His hands are shaking.

It's a slight tremor, probably barely noticeable unless you can _feel_ Miles the way Rachel can, but it goes right down through his legs, and it scares the hell out of her. Miles has always been so close to invincible as to be indistinguishable from the real thing (and this is, perhaps, the only thing upon which she and Bass had ever agreed). And Rachel has never been a person of faith, but, staring at this shocking evidence of Miles' weakness, she realizes that she has _believed_ in Miles' invincibility – unconsciously, undetectably, deeply.

And, with that tiny tremor, her faith is crumbling.

"Miles…" This time she _does_ touch his skin, reaching across to a patch, unmarked, on his left wrist. And he stills – not freezing, not tensing – just stops moving. It's as if it's taking all of his energy just to remain upright; he can't spare any to react to her query. So he just waits – waiting on her, waiting on her whim – and suddenly, Rachel _can't not_. She leans forward and kisses him with a sureness she hasn't felt in fifteen years.

For a moment, he doesn't move. And then he shoves against her, hard and demanding and desperate, backing her right up against her horse until the stirrup and saddle leather digs into her back and the horse snakes its head around in irritation. Miles grunts, elbowing the horse away, then turns and drags her five limping steps into the trees.

And then he's on her again, and she actually _whimpers_ , because his hands wrap around the small of her back and the back of her head, crushing her against him hard enough to feel every line of his jagged frame and kissing her like he's dying for lack of it. She can't get close enough fast enough, and tries to wrap a leg around his hip before he hisses and the sound clears the haze enough for her to remember his shredded back.

"Shit; I'm sorry," she mumbles into his mouth, but he just shakes his head and walks her back into a tree, rough bark cutting through her blouse and scraping the skin of her palms raw. And it's _torture_ not to touch him – with his hands in her hair and his tongue in her mouth and the scent of whiskey and river water and rich earthcoiling around her brainstem.

Because this is _Miles_ , and she has somehow wanted him through _all of it_ – from that first goddamn Christmas in 2002, through thirteen years of marriage (to another man), through three years of hell (at _his_ fucking _hands_ … _oh god,_ his _fucking hands…_ ), and five years of abandonment ( _never again_ , those hands are whispering) – and it's possibly the most fucked up thing in all of her fucked up life, but this, finally, is the sum of all of Rachel's calculations:

She _belongs_ to Miles. (And he to her, though he says it with his hands and his swords and his eyes and never, ever aloud.)

After a minute, he pulls back, gasping, breath hot against her neck. Then he forces himself slowly back from the tree, resting his fever-hot forehead against hers. "Rache…" _Shit_. His voice sounds like wet gravel. She should have been spending less time trying to swallow his tongue and more time trying to keep him alive long enough to reach New York.

But even with that guilt burning in her veins and his forehead burning against hers, she can't keep from leaning up to kiss him one more time. It's slower this time, and she can feel his fatigue and his pain and taste the faint metal of blood from a cut lip. She leans forward, pushing her back away from the tree with both hands, pressing her chest and her mouth and her hips into his until he breaks off with a growl that devolves quickly into something that might almost be mistaken for a laugh.

"Holy hell, Rachel." He's still breathing hard, wavering on his feet. "There are easier ways to kill me." He rocks a half-step forward –

And it's stupid, because it's just Miles' typical terribly mistimed dark humor, but all the same, Rachel can't help but stiffen and pull back. Because of course, if he dies on this trek, it _will be_ her fault.

A _million or more_ deaths on her conscience, and _this_ would be the one to break her.

Miles pulls back, dropping his hands to his sides, misinterpreting her reticence. "Sorry, I – "

"No – " she begins, softly. "It's –"

"Miles?" It's Charlie. Miles straightens. The strain, the weakness, the slight sway on his feet – they all vanish under a confident grin the second his niece comes into view through the trees.

"Over here, kid." His voice still sounds terrible, but Charlie doesn't seem to notice.

"Jason found a place to cross," she's saying as she steps into the clearing, then falls silent as she sees Rachel.

For a surreal moment, Rachel has to fight the urge to smooth out her hair and readjust her blouse, feeling absurdly like a teenager who's been caught making out by an overprotective parent. She is an _adult_ , goddamn it, and Charlie is her _daughter_ , and –

– and Miles is Charlie's _uncle_. With whom Rachel cheated on Charlie's _father_.

And yet, in the scheme of awful things she's done in her life, she finds that this one hardly even ranks among the top ten anymore.

Charlie has obviously decided to leave the matter be for now, and she leads Miles off toward the river without a word. Rachel follows them as far as the horses, then sets herself back to the task of lightening her horse's load and tightening its cinch.

Ten minutes later, they're all lined up at the edge of the river at Jason's chosen crossing spot, ready to take the plunge. Rachel, as the weakest rider, is furthest upriver – not that anyone will actually have a chance in hell of catching her if she loses hold of her horse, but she knows the idea that _maybe they could_ is supposed to make her feel better. Jason is furthest downriver, next to Charlie – who'd practically had to fistfight Miles for the placement – then Miles, then Danny, and then Nora, closest to Rachel.

Without torches, the water is black glass against the starlight, unnervingly fast and silent as it cuts around the shadows of boulders just upstream of them.

Unsurprisingly, none of the horses want to go anywhere near it. It takes Jason actually riding around and cracking her horse on the butt with the end of his reins before it half-rears in protest, and plunges into the current.

The water is breathtakingly cold, and not in the symbolic way – in the actual _holy shit, I can't breathe_ way. Rachel actually lets out a yelp as her horse hits the river and _cold_ , _cold, COLD_ rushing water soaks her jeans to the waist. A second later, the horse lurches forward and the bottom drops out from under them. Rachel follows Miles' instructions and, wincing in preparation, throws herself the rest of the way into the freezing river, keeping one hand on the saddle horn and latching the other onto her horse's breast collar.

As Miles had predicted, the horse yanks her forward through the icy current, making her only job to _not let go_ – a job that is made terrifyingly difficult as the water instantly numbs her hands and arms to the point of nonfuctionality. Her grip slips twice in the first thirty seconds, and it's only the shot of adrenaline as she considers being swept downstream alone that gives her the strength to hold on.

She's downriver of the horse – again, per Miles' orders – which keeps her clear of its pistoning legs, and the tow across the river is almost smooth apart from the rhythmic tugging on her arms and the constant pull of the water on the rest of her body.

She swivels her head, trying to catch a glimpse of the others, and feels an abrupt twinge of guilt when she realizes that she's looking not for Charlie or for Danny, but for _Miles_.

Halfway across, her horse starts to thrash harder against the current, the rhythmic _puff, puff, puff_ of its breath increasing, nostrils flaring, struggling to keep its head clear of the water. And suddenly, there's a boulder in front of them, the current wrapping around it and throwing them into its gravity, and Rachel clings to her horse with every remaining ounce of strength in her numb fingers as the horse's shoulder ricochets off the boulder and the water sweeps over both of their heads.

She's certain that's it, that the horse is going to take her down with it as it drowns, but the creature's will to live is perhaps a bit stronger than her own, because a second later, Rachel finds herself gasping for air, her left shoulder half-dislocated as the horse lunges to the surface, yanking her up with it.

Then she hears Charlie's blood-curdling scream from ten feet downriver.

" _MILES!_ "

And then another shout, almost as panicked, from Jason:

" _Charlie,_ _NO_!"

She tries to twist around to see something, _anything_ , but the current half drowns her, and a second later, her horse's feet are striking bottom on the other side of the river and she's desperately trying to disentangle her numb hands as the horse rushes up the bank to be free from the water.

Nora is already standing on the bank, dripping and shivering, squinting desperately out into the darkness. Her horse is grazing a short distance off, and Rachel's runs to join it.

"Down here!" Jason's quiet shout carries upriver to them, and both Nora and Rachel force their numb legs into a jog until they're close enough to make out the forms of both Jason and Danny, and, nearby, the shadowy shapes of three horses.

"What the hell happened?" Nora gets out the question before Rachel can ask, before Jason's face has even resolved into view in the darkness.

"Charlie…I couldn't stop her. Miles' horse went under; I didn't see what happened. One second he was there; next, he's just fucking disappeared. Then Charlie just _lets go_ and gets swept downriver after him." He's already marching toward the horses, but Nora grabs the shoulder of his coat and yanks him back.

"Like hell – " he starts, but Nora twists him into a wrestling hold and clamps a hand firmly over his mouth.

"You hear that?" she whispers in the sudden silence. Rachel strains to hear anything over the low rushing water and the horses shifting on the grass. Then, very faintly…

…the sound of marching footsteps.

Directly downriver.

"The patrol that blew the bridge." Rachel hardly realizes she's spoken until Nora nods.

"They'll have heard that shouting." Jason moves immediately toward the horses again, but this time, Nora lets him go, nodding.

"We've got to move. Trying to find Miles and Charlie now will only draw attention to them. We'll draw the patrol away, find your friends in New York. Charlie and Miles are smart; they'll meet us there." … _or they'll be dead_ , Rachel can hear her leave out.

It's been less than a minute since they emerged from the water, but as Rachel remounts her horse, she's shivering even _more_ violently than when she'd actually been submerged in the icy current.

But now, it's only half from the cold.

**...**

Charlie is swimming. Or…spinning? Floundering? …Drowned? It's dark, and she's coughing up water, coughing her way…back to consciousness, that's it.

She's been out – not long, because it's still dark and she's soaked to the bone and freezing and still laying half in the water. And _shit_ , she's cold.

She turns on her side, retching up another half-lungful of water and managing to drag herself on her stomach across the gravel far enough that she gets everything but her boots out of the water.

Miles. Where's Miles? She'd jumped in after him.

With a groan, she forces her knees to bend and manages to tuck her numb feet underneath her. It takes balancing on both her hands and knees and another round of vomiting up water before she can stand, and when she does, it's on frighteningly unsteady legs. She turns, trying not to fall – and how is it so damn hard to walk when she can't feel her feet? She can still _see_ them, after all – and looks up the bank – nothing – and then down the bank.

A large, black form lays motionless on the grass at the side of the river. It's too big to be Miles, but she stumbles forward like she's lost all sense of both coordination and self-preservation (and maybe the latter is true) until she gets close enough to figure out that it's a horse.

 _Miles'_ horse.


	18. Turn Signals

_Turn Signals_

_Miles._ Miles Miles Miles Miles – _fuck_ , why can anything never go right for one second around her uncle? If he's not self-destructing with a bottle of bathtub gin, then some actual life-threatening surprise is popping out of nowhere to try to kill the man off. Hunted down by his best friend's soldiers? Hell, that's a normal day for Miles Matheson. Chomped on by a fucking _mountain lion_? A minor inconvenience, but par for the course.

Drowned in the middle of a midnight escape across a freezing river?

Well, shit.

Charlie rubs her hands furiously up and down her arms, trying to un-numb her skin. _Get it together_. Half the thoughts running through her head sound like they ought to be coming out of Miles' mouth. Somebody needs to retain a shred of optimism on this disastrous trip, and, since she's the only one around, it's going to be her.

Fandamntastic.

She'd heard Miles say that once, relating a pre-Blackout story about Monroe and an ill-fated experiment with a girl and a carton of ice cream she's pretty sure she wasn't supposed to overhear. The corner of her mouth twists.

Fine. Time to get moving.

Miles' horse looks dead – at least, it's not stirring, though it's too dark to tell from this distance if it's breathing or not – but there'll be supplies in the saddlebags and maybe a jacket she can dry out once she builds a fire.

Surprisingly, she notices the cold _more_ as soon as she starts moving. Every joint takes an extra effort to shift, and negotiating the loose shale of the riverbank becomes an unexpectedly challenging process. Slip, shift, stab of pain in her knee, slip, scramble, every muscle tensed against the cold wind –

She reaches the horse with a _crunch_ of gravel, and the soft _slap_ of her hand on its wet flank. There's a sort of absolute stillness that comes with death, and Charlie can feel it the moment her fingers make contact. The body is there, but everything that made up the _horse_ is gone. She lifts her hand to rifle through the saddlebags –

And _something_ moves behind the horse.

Six-months-ago Charlie would have yelped.

Now, she just pulls the knife from her boot and leans slowly over the horse, bracing one hand on its cold, motionless ribcage.

At first, it's just distinguishing "dark" from "darker," the shadow of the horse obscuring the form underneath…then a hand reaches up from the darkness and closes around her wrist.

She almost stabs him before she realizes it's Miles.

**...**

Maybe it's just a hair-trigger reaction to that sound that's burned in his brain, but Bass just _moves_ when he hears the gun cock.

He hits the ground so hard it feels like his leg's broken _off_ , and it actually takes him a second to realize he's jumped _toward_ Harold instead of _away_. What the fuck is wrong with him?

Later. Get the gun, shoot the fucker, ask introspective questions later.

Fortunately, he's damn fast for a guy with one leg and a pounding headache. Pain becomes irrelevant pretty quickly when the alternative is getting shot where you lie.

Bass's body slams into Harold's legs just below the knee, and he's surprised when he doesn't hear the gun go off. Instead, there's a _clang_ of metal – and was that Aaron's _sword_ hitting the _wall_? – as Harold goes down, Bass delivering a wrenching _twist_ that he hopes will dislocate the man's knee.

Then _Aaron_ , of all people, hollers, "Don't move!" and Bass can't be sure if it's directed at him or Harold but hell if he's going to listen to the guy who got his combat training from World of Warcraft, so instead, he lands a solid punch to Harold's ribs and grabs for the older man's gun arm –

"Monroe! … _Bass_!" A tennis-shoed foot kicks him in the shoulder as he reaches for Harold's arm, which has gone unnaturally still.

"I've…I think I got him." That's Aaron's voice again, but the words aren't linking up with any sort of rational meaning in Bass's brain.

And then he catches the glint of metal out of the corner of his eye and realizes that Aaron has actually managed to put his sword to Harold's throat. Well, good for him. If he can manage to do that about three hundred more times, maybe they'll actually live through this little adventure and then Bass can throw Fatty McSwordfight a goddamn party.

Harold raises his hands as Bass rolls off of him, but Bass misses his next exchange with Aaron, because his vision blacks for a second like his whole body's refocusing on – oh yeah, _that._ Yeah, he might actually die from the pain in his leg. Miles would tell him that isn't actually possible (they've seen men in a shitload more pain than this _want_ to die from it and fail) but it _feels_ pretty goddamned likely right now.

"…really don't want to stab you," swims Aaron's voice back to the edge of Bass's consciousness.

He shifts to see if Harold still has his gun, and nearly blacks out again. _Hold_. _It._ _Together_. They're sure as fuck not out of this yet.

"Gun," he grits out from his place on the floor, throwing out a hand in Harold's direction.

"How about I take that instead?" Aaron offers. Fat bastard's getting cocky.

And Bass must really be losing it now, because suddenly he bursts into raw, choking laughter as his brain dredges up that scene from _A Christmas Story_. Except, in place of Ralphie, there's Aaron Pittman in a pink bunny suit, asking for a Red Rider bb gun.

"You'll shoot yer eye out, kid," he rasps, and if Aaron can't figure out what's so funny, screw it; at least Bass'll die laughing. He hears a _thunk_ as Harold places the gun on the floor and barely manages to add: " _Safety_."

There's a soft _click_ as Harold engages the safety, and then the 9mm slides across the floor to Aaron.

And Bass's hearing really isn't the greatest right now, what with the blood roaring in his ears, but he's pretty certain he hears Aaron mutter:

"Now what?"

They are so screwed.

**...**

They are so screwed. Like, really, really, royally screwed. Aaron had managed to get the sword against Harold's neck by pure adrenaline more than anything else, and now his hands are shaking so hard he's terrified he's going to cut the guy's throat by pure accident.

Bass is splayed out on his back on the floor, breathing hard. And no wonder. Aaron had never seen anybody except Miles move like that. He'd practically teleported across the room, _with a broken leg_.

Those two, on the same side, would be pants-pissing terrifying.

Trying hard not to replay _that_ little horror film of an idea on his mental screen, Aaron reaches – slowly and carefully – to retrieve the discarded gun, trying to keep his eyes on Harold's throat and not on the look the older man is giving him.

"You brought that man into my house – _my house_ – when Nora _knew_ it could ruin everything I've worked for. Bad enough that I had to let _Miles Matheson_ in here, but – " Harold levers himself up on an elbow, pressing his throat into the point of Aaron's blade. He jerks his bearded chin at Bass. "Sebastian Monroe? That man is the worst kind of mental case."

"Just shut the damn door and shoot him already," Bass snaps, through gritted teeth, and apparently he's gotten his breath back, Aaron thinks as he suppresses a jolt of surprise. "No one'll…hear – " Bass pauses with a hiss and a labored breath. " – over those pipes outside."

"I'm not going to shoot him!" A note of incredulity creeps into Aaron's voice. Heck, it's not like he even could. Harold's gun weighs a ton, and he's already got the sword in his right hand, and – as Bass should know after several hours of haranguing him about his footwork – Aaron's just really not that coordinated.

"If you don't…shoot him…" Bass pauses for a few deep breaths, and Aaron flicks a worried glance at him. He might be a murderous bastard, but given that his crazy teleportation stunt just saved both of their lives, it doesn't seem very thankful of Aaron to let him expire on the concrete floor. Finally, Bass finishes: "…he's just going to call his resistance buddies down here to shoot us."

"Is there an option that doesn't involve shooting, here?"

"Yes," offers Harold, quietly. Aaron can't really help staring into the guy's eyes what with trying to keep the sword pointed at his neck, and he feels, not for the first time, that he's on the wrong side here. From everything he's seen, Harold's a standup guy who's actually making the world a better place. And who's he defending? The dude who murders people's families and conscripts children for kicks.

"Turn over Monroe to me," Harold continues. "I'll make sure he gets justice and you can walk out of here and go join your friends. Hell, I'll give you a horse, an escort, and two weeks' worth of supplies."

Aaron takes a deep breath. "I…"

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Bass close his eyes.

**...**

The minute Harold makes his offer, Bass knows it's over. His only play had been to get Aaron to shoot the bastard before he could start talking. But now, he can see the crisis of conscience in Pittman's eyes, and he knows that's it. He's done.

He feels like he ought to be cursing Miles out – for leaving him here with the worst babysitter in existence, for shooting him in the goddamned leg so he can't fight, for abandoning him in Philly in the first place…

No. The first place had been further back than that.

The first place had been an orange tent, a fight on the side of the road, and Miles blowing two guys' brains out _so they wouldn't hurt anybody else._ Well, fuck, Miles – by that standard, everybody in the whole world ought to be put down by now.

And God knows, Bass had tried.

Maybe it's just his turn.

Pittman takes a deep breath – "I…" – and Bass closes his eyes, soaking in the feeling of the cool concrete, the agony shooting up his leg. Maybe Harold'll just put a bullet in his brain. At this point, it might almost be a relief.

"…I can't."

The world tilts on two words.

Bass's eyes snap open. "..th' fuck?" he mumbles, barely aware he's voicing the words. And maybe it's the blood roaring in his ears or he's just losing his fucking mind, but did he just hear Aaron _refuse_ to let Harold kill him?

"Look, I'm really, really sorry." Aaron's voice again. "I just made a promise to Miles –and Nora, and the rest of them – and I know you don't think much of him, but he's saved my life about six hundred times in the last twelve weeks, and on the off chance that he's actually got some sort of a plan and Bass – Monroe is his bargaining chip, I just…can't." He pauses like he's out of breath from the explanation. Really, it wouldn't surprise Bass. The guy probably can't run three steps without having a heart attack. "It – it would put Nora in danger too."

Actually, that's pretty smart. Aaron's not as good at it as Bass is, but bringing Nora into the discussion is a decent way to soften Harold up. Good on you, Pittman.

Of course, the smartest way would be to just _shoot Harold_ , as Bass had originally suggested. If he could get up off the floor, he'd stage a demonstration. You know, for educational purposes.

Harold snorts. "Nora's already in danger – plenty of it. Neville thinks your buddies kidnapped Sebastian Monroe…oh wait, you _actually did_. What in hell was Matheson thinking?"

Bass tunes out for a moment as Harold and Pittman argue over Miles' motives. Bass has finished a goddamned PhD course in that subject over the last eight years anyway – for all the good it's done him.

His blurry eyes travel past Pittman to focus on the tall, locked cabinet in the middle of the room.

Locked.

Inside a secret room.

In the basement of the house of a closet rebel sympathizer.

Suddenly, Bass has a burning need to know what's in there.

"Hey, Harold." He's not as well-versed in pain management as Miles, and even to him, his voice sounds strained. He forces himself up on one elbow, noting that – fantastic – he's bleeding again. That explains the fuzzy feeling in his head, and maybe also the blurring around the edges of his vision.

The old man gives him a sideways look, surprised.

"What's in the closet?" _Bingo_. Harold's face twitches for just a moment before he sets his bearded mouth in a hard line.

"Gun." Bass waves at Aaron, ignoring the matching wave of pain that ripples up his leg.

"I know you're probably a little delirious, but we've already been over this. I'm not handing you a gun."

"I'm not gonna shoot anyone. Dungeon Master's honor." He manages to twist at least half his face into a grin and tries to make the sign of a pentacle over his heart, but it's pretty clear Aaron's not getting the joke. "Gonna shoot off that lock."

And then, like an idiot, Aaron turns his head to look at the cabinet.

Harold lunges before he's fully turned, and Bass has only a second to grit his teeth – this is going to hurt like hell – before he twists and uses his good leg to kick Harold's feet out from under him. Aaron spins back around, startled, bringing his hands up in reflexive self-defense…

…and the sword runs Harold through the chest.

Aaron drops it in shock, watching as Harold slides to the ground, gurgling. The gun falls from his nerveless fingers and he doubles over, leaning against the far wall like he's going to be sick. The first time'll do that to you.

That blur around Bass's vision is getting pretty bad, but he's had worse. The gun's only about four feet away, and Miles would kick him in the ribs and tell him he can crawl that far.

So he does.

His fingers close around the cool metal. Harold is whispering something to Pittman, desperate hisses between rattling, gurgling breaths. Suddenly, Aaron's head turns sharply toward the cabinet.

Just in time for Bass to blow the lock clean off it. The _CRACK_ of the pistol is still echoing in the small space when Aaron leaps up and sprints into Bass's line of fire, flinging the cabinet door open. The ex-Google exec's knees shake as he just stands there and stares for a minute, blocking Bass's view.

Then Harold mumbles "Hurry…" and Aaron fumbles in the cabinet for a second. When he turns around, he's holding a small box, a _laptop computer_ –

– _and a pendant._

**...**

"Miles!"

Charlie's only answer is a groan. Down the shoreline, she can see flickers of torchlight reflecting across the sand and hear the voices of a Militia patrol closing in. She vaults the horse quickly, grinding damp sand into her knees as she drops next to Miles. He's half pinned under the weight of the horse, and it's going to take more than she can manage to move him.

The torches and voices are getting closer, and Charlie springs quickly to her feet, rifling through the horse's saddlebags for – there. Miles' flint. His swords are lashed to the side of the horse securely, but Charlie just draws one and uses it to cut the scabbards loose. She hesitates a moment, then buckles them around her waist.

She glances at Miles. He's half unconscious and there's not exactly time to spell out her plan. If she waits here any longer, the Militia will just catch two of them.

Mouthing a silent apology, Charlie takes one last look down the shoreline and sprints off into the woods. Running forces lukewarm blood pumping through her cold-slowed muscles, and by the time she reaches the trees, she's no longer shivering violently.

Her feet _crunch_ on brittle, dry underbrush. The river may be running heavy with snowmelt, but it hasn't rained in this part of the country for nigh on a month.

And that's what Charlie's counting on to save Miles' skin. With shaking hands – just cold, got to be the cold – she scrapes together a pile of dry leaves and sticks, grabs a rock, and waits.

The Militia soldiers find Miles and the horse a minute later, and it's almost more than Charlie can do to sit tight there while about eight of them surround Miles and one kneels to see if he's dead or not.

He rises pretty quickly, and Charlie's heart drops into her stomach for a second. But then the soldier jerks a thumb at the horse and the other men set to work moving it off Miles.

Praying she's timing this right, Charlie positions the rock over the pile of dry leaves and strikes the flint twice.

The embers hit the brittle tinder and blossom immediately into flame. Charlie stokes the fire, but honestly, it doesn't need much encouragement. Everything in this forest is ready to burst into flame at the touch of a spark.

She jams a branch into the growing fire and watches the end blacken and then glow. Forcing herself to walk slowly, she creeps along the edge of the tree line, trailing the burning branch through the underbrush for about thirty feet, hurrying her steps as the ground behind her starts to catch fire.

Fire safety had been a big topic once she'd hit six or seven – old enough to help her Dad cook and build fires. A big fire, without the helicopters, water pumping systems or fire trucks her parents always talked about, could rip through acres of crops or woodland, destroying every town in its path.

Honestly, Charlie's had so many lessons on how _not_ to start a forest fire that it's almost ludicrously easy to do the opposite.

She hears the shouts from the soldiers on the shoreline well before she gets back in sight of them. On the way back, she has to sprint through the trees, making a much wider circuit to avoid what is quickly becoming a wall of roaring flame.

She stumbles out of the tree line, coughing a little, in time to catch the silhouettes of the Militia soldiers running away down the beach, presumably to try to defend their base from the rapidly growing fire. As she'd hoped, a forest fire is a much bigger and more present concern than a half-drowned ex-Militia general, especially since Monroe – the prize they really care about – isn't with him.

The fire is starting to light up the beach pretty clearly, and she can see from almost twenty feet away that she'd timed it perfectly: the soldiers had finished moving Miles out from under the horse before they'd run off to start up the emergency fire brigade.

Miles' swords clink at her sides as she kneels next to him – and honestly, now that it's a bit lighter, he doesn't really look any worse than he'd looked before the swim.

Not that she really thinks that'd be possible.

His eyes are fluttering, and Charlie turns her best encouraging grin on him. "Hey, Miles…"

"…Charlie?" Her grin widens till it threatens to split her face. He tries to lever himself up on one elbow and catches sight of his swords hanging at her waist. "You gonna tell me what the hell's going on?"

"Well, you fell into the river, got crushed by a horse and then nearly shot by Militia soldiers, and then I started a forest fire to save you."

Miles blinks at her, but doesn't offer a comment. "Th'others?" he slurs, trying to roll to his side.

Charlie reaches forward to steady him, avoiding the torn patches on his jacket. "No idea. Upriver, I think."

Miles raises an eyebrow at her, and she can tell he's wondering how _she_ ended up down here with him, but thankfully, he doesn't ask.

"Can you walk?" She hates to even ask it, but it's not like they've got a choice. If there's one thing she's learned about her uncle in the last three months, it's that he appreciates her being practical.

She holds out an arm, and Miles takes it. In the end, she has to get her shoulder under his to leverage him to his feet, but at least he's standing – wavering a little, but standing.

With Miles' arm over her shoulders and his swords clanking at her waist, Charlie sets off up the shoreline toward the others. Behind them, the fire Charlie had started lights the night sky in shifting orange ripples. Even with the wind blowing the worst of the heat away from them, it's suddenly a lot warmer on the beach.

Charlie grins. Miles, still using her shoulder for balance, jerks his head back at the flames. "Not bad thinking, Charlie." She can tell that's only half the statement, so she waits, putting one weary leg in front of the other and trying to flex her shoulder so it's more comfortable under Miles' weight. Miles pauses, gathering his breath for another comment, and finally says, "It's something Bass woulda' done."

After that, he falls silent, and suddenly, Charlie isn't sure whether to be proud or sick.

**...**

Bass has lost enough blood that he's not entirely sure if he's hallucinating as Aaron kneels next to Harold and flips open the laptop. The computer geek looks like he's going to be sick or maybe pass out from sheer disbelief, and it's a feeling with which Bass is intimately acquainted.

It was how he'd felt when he'd finally gotten his hands on the first pendant.

 _The first_. How many of these things were there in the world? And how had Harold ended up with one in his basement? More importantly, did he know what it –

There's the unmistakable _bweep_ of something _powering up_ , and Bass's heart clenches as he misses a breath. He'd never thought he'd miss a sound so much.

"Hang on, hang on…" Aaron is muttering, face creased in the blue glow of the laptop screen. Harold murmurs something Bass can't hear; there's a desperate clatter of keys, Aaron typing as fast as he can, and then the ex-Googler is fumbling with the mysterious box, hands shaking so hard he almost drops it twice. He hands something from the box to Harold, and a second later, Harold lets out a scream so loud that Bass uses the last of his strength to flip over and slap a hand over the old man's mouth.

"Damn it, Aaron," he snarls, past caring how much it hurts to talk. Or move. Or breathe. "He'll have the whole house down here in a sec – "

Suddenly, Bass's vision goes pure white as Aaron reaches forward and jams something _into the bullet hole in his broken leg_.

A scream louder than Harold's echoes in the enclosed space, and Bass feels someone clamp a hand over his own mouth. His leg is _crawling_ , from the inside out – bones _moving,_ muscles jumping and buzzing, blood suddenly coursing from his thigh all the way down to his toes again.

The hand leaves his mouth and he rolls over and immediately empties the contents of his stomach all over the concrete floor. He can barely hear his own retching and heaving over the deafening pounding of his heart.

After a minute, he rolls back onto his back, ready for another wave of pain to hit him.

But it never comes.

…the hell? Slowly, Bass sits up, testing his weight on an elbow, then raising himself to a full sitting position.

Aaron has set the laptop to the side and is bent over Harold, shaking the older man by the shoulder. Bass can't tell if he's dead or alive, but by the way he's not moving, his money's on dead.

He glances down at his left leg – splinted, pants torn, covered in half-dried blood. On impulse, he tests it, wiggling his ankle in a circle.

It takes him a second to rip the splint away – Miles and Nora, like them or not, had done a decent job trying to repair Miles' violent handiwork – but a minute later, he tosses it to the side and peels his pants leg up to reveal perfectly smooth, unmarked skin.

His leg has _healed_. In about five or six seconds.

Bass stares down at the limb in disbelief, bending his knee just to make sure he's not hallucinating. When his eyes snap up again, Aaron's staring at him from over Harold's corpse, eyes wide and panicked.

"…the fuck did you just do?"

Aaron just shakes his head, jerky and panicky. He's halfway into shock, from the look in those eyes.

Bass has never been one to pass up an opportunity. The gun's still lying on the floor next to him, so he grabs it, rolls to his feet, and jogs over to the cabinet. And _fuck_ he's missed this – moving so easily on his own two feet. Don't know what you got till it's gone, and all that.

There's an empty, hard-sided briefcase sitting open in the cabinet, with three spots for the laptop, pendant, and…whatever that box is. Bass snags it, then grabs his sword belt from the corner of the room and tugs the buckles tight around his waist. And damned if that doesn't feel good, too. He's less…edgy, when he's properly armed. He can practically feel the tension drain out of his shoulders.

It's the work of maybe thirty more seconds to gather the laptop, pendant, and box and fit them into the briefcase. He flips the lid on the box and is greeted with one clear, pill-shaped capsule, blinking an iridescent – and clearly electric – blue. There are two matching empty spaces next to the capsule.

Aaron makes no move to stop him as he gathers the electronics – not even when he reaches down and tugs the sword out of Harold's chest. In fact, the chubby programmer doesn't move at all, just stares at the pool of Harold's blood on the floor.

Bass wipes the blood from his sword and re-sheathes it next to the other. He should walk out that door. Right now, get as fast and as far as he can from here. Harold had mentioned Neville leading the patrol specifically, and maybe it's just that paranoid tickle in the back of Bass's mind, but he can't imagine Jeremy sending Neville out alone after him. The man's been angling for the Presidency since there was a Presidency to angle for.

He should go, now.

Pittman may know more than he's letting on about the contents of this briefcase and what they can do, but he's a fucking liability in a fight and frankly, a pain in the ass.

There's no way he'll be able to track Miles with Fatty McSlowpoke in tow.

Shit. Since when had his plan turned into "tracking Miles?" He's got to be losing it. Well, he can ponder that on the road. Bass takes a step toward the bookshelf door.

Then he swears, and turns around.

"Pittman." No response.

" _Aaron_." Aaron stirs slightly, eyes leaving the floor for the first time.

"Let's go, Padawan. Get up." He grabs Aaron by the jacket and tries to haul him from the floor. When that won't work, he kicks him in the leg.

"Why?" Aaron mutters numbly as he – _finally_ – stumbles to his feet.

Bass shoves the briefcase into Aaron's hands, draws one of his swords, and uses the other hand to drag Aaron out through the bookcase door.

"Hell if I know."


	19. Road Trip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, everyone: Last of the original chapters, first posted in July of 2014. Tomorrow, the road trip finally continues! :-D

_Road Trip_

Stairs. Fourteen stairs from the basement to the – where are they going now? Aaron's hands are sticky with blood, and it seems weird that some of it came from inside the guy who's dragging him along by the arm right now, and some of it came from inside a guy who died.

…a guy who Aaron killed.

There'd been this moment when Harold's eyes had gone flat, like his soul had just been sucked out the hole in his abdomen, and – _oh shit_ , he's going to puke…

Something hits his shoulder – a wall – and he must have stopped, because Bass is yelling in his ear. They should call him Fuck-up Pittman. He couldn't even kill the right guy.

"…moving, Pittman!" Right. Movement. People coming to kill them. Well, coming to kill Bass, and him by extension. Aaron snorts with crazed laughter, and then nearly pukes again. Because _he's the Snape to Bass's Voldemort._

"Goddamn, useless, fucking…." Aaron had heard the gamut of cursing – the part of language at which Miles was surprisingly articulate – over the last several months, but now it's becoming pretty clear that, of the two former buddies, Bass is, (linguistically, at least) the more creative.

"…on a shit sandwich!"

**…**

It's been less than forty seconds, and Pittman is already going to get them killed. The guy's _moving_ – in that he's putting one leg in front of the other – but like an elephant shot with a tranquilizer gun, and this was a stupid-ass mistake, because any second now, one of Harold's guys is going to come around a corner, see Bass holding a gun and Pittman holding that briefcase and covered in blood, and jump to some pretty accurate conclusions.

…Like the conclusion that Bass is a big fucking idiot.

Somehow, they make it up the stairs without incident – apart from Aaron stopping to try to puke, twice – and Bass checks the hallway with a quick glance – _clear_ – and drags Pittman down it into a side room.

A bathroom, actually. Fantastic. At least Pittman can puke all he wants while he's waiting for Bass to get back.

"Stay here; lock the door." Aaron blinks woozily up at him from where he's collapsed on the toilet, and Bass shoves the window open and drops out without waiting to see if he's going to follow through on his instructions.

It's freezing outside (or maybe it's just that he'd gotten used to the stuffy basement), and Bass immediately adds _warmer clothes_ to the list of shit he's about to steal. He shoves the gun under his belt, the heavy metal cold against his lower back, and draws his swords instead. If they're lucky, he can keep any confrontations quiet enough that they can get out ahead of the shitstorm.

There's a six-car garage on this end of the property, near the back side of the house, which has probably been converted into a horse barn. Normally, he'd bet on it being heavily guarded, but he has a fuzzy recollection of coming in through a set of gates last night, so maybe Harold has banked on his outer security being good enough to make a guard here superfluous.

And maybe the Good Fairy will show up and sing Bass "Happy Birthday."

He takes the long way around.

Occasionally, as he crouches, or creeps, or kneels in the mud, he glances down at the bare skin of his left leg, feeling a twitch of that crawling, electricity-driven re-knitting, and an absurd, unsettling terror latches onto him. It's ridiculous. He's been primed by too many sci fi movies – _Blade Runner_ , _Terminator_ – but the idea of something electronic squirreling around in his leg, living and moving around inside his body – is several leagues beyond creepy. He tries to concentrate instead on the rush of moving on his own two feet again. Between that and this shittily-planned escape attempt, he's got enough adrenaline coursing through his system to run five or six marathons.

 _I mean, heck, who needs horses?_ he thinks, pulling the side door to the garage quietly open. On this kind of high, he and Pittman can just run all the way to fucking…

Suddenly, Bass stops short, halfway through the cracked-open door. It's pure instinct, and it takes his conscious brain a few seconds to tell him why. He stares, frozen, into the dimly-lit interior, scanning for threats, while it comes to him:

The garage smells wrong. It doesn't smell like horses, or hay, or leather, or dust, or mold, or fucking saddle soap, or any of the other weird-ass smells Bass has grown to think of as normal over the last fifteen years.

It smells like _gasoline_.

**…**

Aaron has finished feeling nauseous from shock and moved on to feeling nauseous from fear by the time Bass practically leaps back in through the window, grinning like a cat on speed.

"You are never going to believe this…"

Aaron blinks up at him, still clutching the briefcase in blood-coated fingers. "Wh…huh?"

"Hey." _Snap._ "Padawan!" _Snap._ Bass punctuates each word with a _snap_ of his fingers in front of Aaron's face. "Ground control to Major Tom. Get up, move out, the Force is with us or whatever."

Aaron's not sure if it's the jarring snapping or the litany of pop culture references, but something finally clicks over in his head. He can practically hear the fans in his brain start whirring again.

"What…" He clears his throat, tries for something a little less squeaky. "What did you find?"

That manic grin changes Bass's voice into something less sinister and more reminiscent of a five-year old who's just been told he's getting a real live dinosaur for his birthday. "A motherfucking _Jeep_."

With one pull, Bass hauls Aaron to his feet and practically pushes him headfirst through the window. Once outside, he draws a sword, drags Aaron into a crouch, and taps the briefcase with one finger, still sporting that crazed smile. "And you're going to start it for us."

Because of course he is. Because this is Aaron's life now: sword lessons, murder, and a shouldn't-even-be-possible "best bros" road trip with the psycho dictator of the century.

If the universe has a sense of humor, Aaron's pretty sure he's the butt of most of its jokes.

**…**

It takes a _very_ tense ten minutes to get the Jeep up and running. Bass loads extra gasoline – God fucking bless Harold, who had apparently been the only one in the whole goddamned Republic who'd actually _believed_ Bass's talk about getting the power back on – two spare tires, water, oil, a tool kit (not that he'll know what the hell to do with it), and a case of ammo he'd taken off a guard he'd had to kill who got too close to the garage, while Aaron fiddles with shaking hands with the pendant. Finally – _finally_ – the thing comes to life, and Bass siphons gas into the Jeep's drained tank, winds the garage door pulley around the trailer hitch and then forward to tie it off where they can cut the line, and then tests the range of the pendant by flicking the Jeep's lights on and off.

They _work_ , and Bass's chest constricts suddenly. He settles into the driver's seat, and suddenly, he's transported back to Miles' Challenger, the night of the Blackout, the last time he sat in a car. He's there like it's _now_ , booze on his breath, flickering phone in his hand, staring at Miles in the half-dark like a lost puppy, with no fucking clue that this moment heralds the beginning of the worst fifteen years of their lives. The aftermath of the Blackout was worse than Afghanistan, worse than Iraq, worse than any of the shitholes Miles and Bass had fought in together – warlords and cannibals and disease and starvation and civilian casualties numbering in the _millions_ , and somehow, they'd come through all of _that_ together and it had been _Bass_ who'd driven Miles away.

But that night, they sit in – and then on the hood of – the Challenger for an hour before they decide to leg it back to base. Bass crosses his arms behind his head, the smooth chill of the windshield soaking through his jacket, the warmth of Miles' shoulder on one side making the temperature weirdly off balance.

Miles sprawls, lanky limbs stretched diagonally over the hood, knee cocked and heel resting above the left headlight. "What would you do, Bass – you know, if we weren't doing this? Like, say I decided to take up pole dancing, or – "

"Be your pimp, you fucker." Bass cuts him off with a lecherous smirk. Something about the way Miles asks the question pricks under his skin.

"– fine then, become a librarian – "

"Miles, you haven't read a book since the third grade."

Miles' fist _thumps_ into his solar plexus, not quite hard enough to hurt. "Asshole." He sits up on the hood, shifting to look at Bass. "I'm serious. Say I didn't come back from – "

"Shut the fuck up," Bass rejoins automatically.

"…Well, what would you do?"

 _Kill myself_. "Rule the fucking world, Miles. Play Halo and eat nachos all day. Who the hell knows? What does it matter?" Bass shoves himself up too, squinting out over the darkened highway, wandering people, corpses of cars. Miles doesn't answer, so after a minute, he asks, "Why? What would _you_ do? You know, if I – " _Snuffed it._ " – decided to go deal cards in Vegas the rest of my life?"

There's a moment of silence long enough that Bass actually looks over at Miles, and catches just a flash of a brief, guilty look before Miles twists his face into a sarcastic grimace. "Probably go through with my pole dancing plan."

Bass laughs and punches him in the arm, feeling inexplicably like he's dodged a bullet.

The echo of that chuckle rings in his ears as he comes back to the present, his hands gripping the Jeep's steering wheel, a lump forming in his throat. Suddenly, Pittman's nasal tenor cuts through his torpor: "Are you going to put on your seatbelt?"

Bass just turns his head and blinks at him like he's a science experiment, and Pittman shrinks back into the seat cushions, holding up the pendant like a little shield. "Fine. You don't like seatbelts. Not like anyone's going to pull us over anyway, I guess…"

"You just keep that thing working," Bass mutters, then looks out the windshield at the garage door and back down at the ignition. When he reaches out, his hand is shaking worse than the first time he touched a girl. _Fuck it_. He twists the key with as much violence as he can manage; the engine sputters in time with his heart, and he slams down on the accelerator to keep it going.

The Jeep roars to life.

It's _loud_ in the enclosed space, and Pittman covers an ear with the hand holding the pendant and grips the roll bar with his other hand. Bass whoops loud enough to hurt his own eardrums – they're hell and gone from subtle now, anyway – and drops the Jeep into gear.

Thankfully, his trick with the garage door pulley works – though Pittman almost doesn't cut the line in time and then almost falls out of the Jeep when he does – and they roar out the door and all the way to the back gate before anyone thinks to give chase. The gate is a wrought iron monstrosity, and Bass isn't an idiot; he'd scouted a weak point in the fence on his way back to retrieve Pittman and he makes for that now, spinning clods of grass and cutting tire tracks through the back lawn. If he weren't pretty sure they were about to be shot at, he'd pull some donuts, just for the sheer exhilaration of it.

 _BANG._ The first shot whizzes past his ear, and if only Miles were here to see this, he'd fucking lose his shit. He doesn't have time to grab for his pistol before they're smashing through the fence, splinters flying and Aaron ducking and covering behind the dash, then there's eight feet of grass and rocks – he drops it into first and hears another shot _ping_ off the roll bar – and then they're out on the dirt road and Bass is gunning it up to third, then fourth. They hit forty-five – which is at least ten miles an hour faster than any sane person would drive on this road – before Bass looks over his shoulder and decides that nobody's got a chance in hell of catching them. He's met a couple horses that can do this speed (met, not ridden – riding like a goddamn maniac was always Miles' thing), but they can keep it up for a couple minutes. The Jeep can do this for _hours._

He hears a groan from the passenger seat and looks over at Aaron, who's slumped in a heap, clutching the pendant and the shoulder strap of his seatbelt in both hands. "Have I mentioned," he squeaks as the Jeep rattles over the ruts, kicking up a spray of dust that has Bass grinning and rubbing grit out of his eyes, "that I get really carsick?"

Bass looks at him blankly for a moment before Aaron raises a wry eyebrow over his glasses and Bass realizes that the chubby tech genius is _joking_ with him.

And damn, it's been a long, _long_ fucking time since anybody's done that.

He hears himself say, "I'll make sure to swing by a Walgreens and pick you up some Dramamine," and Aaron actually laughs – though it's kind of a tense laugh – and then reaches up and _hangs the pendant over the rearview mirror like a pair of fuzzy dice._

And it's so much like something Bass himself would have done, several lifetimes ago, that he chokes on his next sentence and falls silent instead.

For the next thirty miles, they listen to the roar of the engine and the rumble of the tires spinning over dirt road. They roar through the bridge crossing at Trenton to dropped guns and open-mouthed stares, and Bass could stop – he's the goddamned President, after all, and they probably have intel on Miles' movements – but instinct just jams his foot down harder on the gas. For all he knows, Neville's passed this way already too, and he trusts the scheming bastard about as far as he could throw this Jeep.

Five miles before the outpost at the Raritan River crossing, Bass pulls off the road and shuts off the engine, ignoring the jab of fear in his stomach that maybe it won't turn back on. Pittman snags the pendant off the rearview immediately – so, for all his joke-cracking, there's clearly no trust lost there – and gives Bass a quizzical glance.

"Miles rode this way, and Neville must have followed him. They would have had to have fucking winged horses to make it any farther than this in a day, and since they don't know we're coming, and I don't feel like driving into an ambush before they realize they're shooting at their boss – " _Or because they've been_ told _to shoot at their boss_ , he doesn't say, " – we're going to stop until morning and then do some scouting on foot."

"We?" Aaron does… _something_ , that powers down the pendant (too fast for Bass to see how), then unbuckles his seat belt and climbs gingerly down from the Jeep.

"Fine. Me. _You're_ going to stay here and try not to get killed." At least not until Bass has figured out how to use that pendant. "How's your fire-building, Padawan?"

**…**

Bass makes him build _two_ fires – one larger, to draw any unwanted attention, and within their line of sight…presumably so Bass can more easily murder anyone who stops to check it out. The second fire, they build tiny, under the edge of a big boulder that will reflect the heat back up at them. Bass grabs blankets from the back of the Jeep – and how bizarre is it to be able to say that again? – and tosses one at Aaron.

It's not really late enough to sleep, and after Bass wanders around a bit (he's either looking for Miles' or Neville's trail or setting some sort of perimeter traps…or maybe he just really likes extra long walks in the woods), he flops down across the fire from Aaron and stares into the flames.

It's just starting to get a little creepy when Bass suddenly looks up like he's just remembered Aaron is there. Frowning, he reaches down at his side, grabs his canteen, and tosses it to Aaron, jerking his chin at Aaron's hands. "Better wash that off."

Aaron looks down dumbly at his palms, his forearms, his sleeves. Dried blood looks so different; he could almost pretend it's dirt crusted onto the creases in his skin. But water turns it coppery again, and he almost gags at the smell. He scrubs slowly, watching the dirt in front of him turn black one drop at a time, scrubs the blood out of every wrinkle of his shirtsleeves, rolls them up to his elbows and starts in on his arms. He's still working intently a while later when Bass clears his throat.

"Might want to lay off there, Lady Macbeth."

Aaron looks down at his forearms, bright red in the firelight, covered in scratches from his scrubbing fingernails. There's no trace of Harold's or Bass's blood, but he can still _smell_ it, tangy and stomach-turning and mixed with his own disgusting sweat. Bass holds out a hand, gesturing for the canteen. They lock gazes for an awkward second over the firelight, and he can see those intense blue eyes shift briefly to his shaking hands.

As Bass settles back against the rock behind him and resumes his creepy stare into the fire, he mumbles, "Don't think about it. It'll just make you crazy."

"You would know, huh?" The words tumble out in a sort of choked laugh, and Aaron wonders if he _is_ going crazy. Hey, let's antagonize Sebastian Monroe – it's as much fun as poking a feral tiger with a stick! But Aaron's brain suddenly has no control over his mouth: "Does it get easier? You know, when you're constantly murdering people on purpose?"

Bass's eyes don't leave the fire, but the fingers of his right hand flicker. "Shit happens in war."

"Is that honestly what you tell yourself?"

One second, Bass is on his side of the fire, lounging against a rock. The next, he's got Aaron by the hair and is slamming his head back into the dirt, knife pressed against his neck. Aaron can feel a thin, paper-cut fire nicking the edge of his adam's apple. His blue eyes spark and his voice drops to a low, dangerously level whisper. "I know what you're telling _your_ self, Pittman. You're wishing your aim had been just a little bit better – that you'd had the balls – or the fucking coordination – to turn around and kill _me_ instead of being a stupid fat bastard who stabbed the wrong guy just because he forgot to look where he was pointing his sword."

Before the last word is all the way out of Bass's mouth, Aaron hauls off and punches him in the side of the face.

For a minute, he's as shocked by it as Bass is. They both blink at each other in the shifting light, and Aaron absolutely can't read the other man's expression. Then Bass releases him – Aaron's head _thwocks_ back into the dirt – …and busts out _laughing_.

The killer dictator touches a hand to the side of his face, where Aaron's punch has split his cheek, and continues to snort in disbelieving amusement. The knife abruptly disappears back into the boot from whence it came – so fast that Aaron hardly sees it happen – and Bass drops down onto his boot heels a couple feet away, cocks his head to one side, and examines Aaron like he's a previously undiscovered species. Aaron glares back at him, rolling his fear and howling frustration and anger at, well, pretty much everything in his whole godawful life, into that one look. After a minute, Bass stands, still grinning, and returns to his place on the other side of the fire, tossing over his shoulder a "You're gonna be all right, Pittman."

Aaron returns to his blanket in silence, trying to put a name on the unfamiliar feeling coursing through his bones. It takes him five full minutes, but finally he decides:

It feels like _winning_.


	20. Jump Start

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we go. A thousand thanks to Thinktink2 over on ff.net, who wouldn't let me forget about this story, and to buttercups3, who has always been either the Monroe to my Miles or the Miles to my Monroe (I'm never sure which) in this fandom. The power went out on this story almost exactly two and a half years ago, but damned if y'all didn't switch it back on. I'll try not to nuke anything now that it's back.

_Jump Start_

“They’ve crossed the river, sir.” 

Major Tom Neville fixes the scout with a steady gaze, feeling the muscle in his cheek twitch in apoplectic fury. “They’ve _what_?”

“Crossed, sir. On horseback. After the garrison blew the bridge at Albany crossing.” 

“Seven people _swam_ across the Raritan River in the dead of night, with - ”

“Six, sir. One wounded.”

Tom pauses. His voice, moderated before, drops into a register that has the scout flinching back on his horse. “ _Six_?”

“Tracks indicate five horses, joined by a sixth rider shortly after passing the Eberhardt plantation. We found a...a dead mountain lion, and a fair amount of blood.” 

“No chance any of them were riding double?” 

“Not at that speed, sir. Their horses would have fallen behind.” 

So the wounded one is Matheson, then. Tom can’t pinpoint anyone else in that group who could ride that far after sustaining severe blood loss. And Tom has an excellent idea who has joined Matheson’s merry little band, but now is not the time or place to contemplate his son’s increasingly treasonous tendencies. 

Focus. Hone. Direct the rage at the most efficacious target. 

_Miles Matheson_ has been a needling irritation in Tom’s side for _years_. Even gone from Philadelphia, the man’s _lack_ of presence brought constant frustration, as Monroe sank further and further into unhinged paranoia and started taking potshots at all those closest to him. He could forgive Matheson his ill-thought-out assassination attempt - Tom himself had planned a similar - albeit more effective - gambit to put into motion at the proper time. But the man had laid hands on his _wife_. Had made a _fool_ of him in front of Monroe, again and again, but now, worse, in front of _Julia_. That, he will not forgive. 

He’ll actually be a little disappointed if Miles has managed to drown himself crossing the river. He’d been looking forward to some...quality time, on the ride back to Philly. 

The scout has fallen silent. Ah, yes. Waiting for him. 

“Thank you, Private Colter. Dismissed.” He doesn’t miss the way the man’s shoulders sag in relief.

He turns in the saddle then, to the stocky Sergeant mounted next to him. Harding is both dependably vicious and fiercely loyal - to his commanding officer first, and the Republic second. It’s a quality Tom prizes in all of his men. Ruthlessness, devotion, and a healthy dose of discretion to avoid the magnifying lens of Monroe’s paranoia. “Take your men and backtrack to the plantation. You’re looking for two members of Matheson’s party - likely, at least one of them will be injured.” He can see no other reason for Matheson to have left them behind.

Sergeant Harding doesn’t ask why, or how he knew, or any other number of inane, time-wasting questions. Instead he nods, says, “Major Neville, sir!” and immediately rides away to rouse his men. The man knows his orders; no need to have them repeated. Professionalism. So hard to come by these days. 

The next nearest bridge crossing is less than three miles away. That much closer to everything he and Julia have worked for. He can practically _taste_ it. 

And it tastes like blood. Matheson’s, _and_ Monroe’s. 

…

Aaron’s brought back to wakefulness by a hand over his mouth, and his first panicked thought is that Monroe has decided to murder him in his sleep after all. 

Then Bass’s voice - uncomfortably close to his ear - hisses, “Shut up. Patrol.” Aaron nods his understanding, groggily hoping that will make Bass stop suffocating him, which it does. He rolls as quietly as he can to his side, grabbing his pack and keeping low as he follows Bass right up to the Jeep. Bass makes a series of hand signals that Aaron interprets as _Get the fuck in before I kill you_ , _Stay down, or_ they’ll _kill you_ , and _Wait_. It’s possible he’d added his own interpretive flair to the first two signals, but the third seems pretty clear. Except...Wait...for what? 

By the time he turns around to ask, Bass is gone. Aaron gets in, sets his pack on the seat, and lays on the floorboards of the Jeep, clutching the pendant in both hands and wishing that its list of magical powers included invisibility. And then it clicks:

One defenseless geek carting a _literal_ piece of magic jewelry across a hostile land full of enemies who want to use its power to destroy the world. 

With a slightly hysterical edge, Aaron thinks that he doesn’t know if that makes him Frodo or Sam, but Bass....

...is _definitely_ Gollum. 

…

Bass tells himself that the reason he’s hiding in wait is that he’s not sure if the patrol following them is rebel or Militia. It could be anybody, he reasons - hell, border disputes with Georgia have gotten hot enough recently it could even be a scouting party from their Federation - 

\- But of course it’s not. He recognizes Sergeant Harding by the man’s _horse_ , of all things (Miles would be so damn proud; Bass has always told him all horses look the same to him, because they _do_ ). But Harding’s gelding is an odd shade of muddled dark gray, and almost as stocky as the man himself. It stands out among the bays and chestnuts of the rest of his patrol. 

If Harding is here, then Jeremy has Neville out hunting for him. And, given that it’s Neville, “hunting” might not actually be far from the truth. Bass has not stayed in power, alone, for all these years without developing a healthy radar for situations that could go very bad, very quickly.

Nevertheless, a judicious application of power at the correct moment…

He steps out in front of Harding’s horse, close enough that the animal spooks, spins, and nearly deposits Harding on the ground. 

“ _Sergeant_.” He laces the title with all the disdain he can muster, a reminder of the man’s position and how much lower it is than Bass’s. 

“President Monroe,” Harding announces, slightly louder than necessary, and the quiet, tinkling alarm bells in the back of Bass’s head start to sound klaxon-loud. Harding’s alerting the rest of his patrol. “Word is you’d been shot in the leg and kidnapped by terrorists,” Harding continues, appraising Bass with a look that clearly takes in the fact that he’s standing on his own two feet. 

“I thought we’d trained our men better than to listen to rumors.” He’s five feet from Harding’s horse. He could take the man down in a step and two strikes, as long as - 

Then Harding whips out his sidearm and points it at Bass’s chest. “Turns out you actually betrayed your own Republic to the Rebels and got shot in the chest for your trouble. Funny how those stories turn around.” 

Bass’s pulse jumps in his throat. He’d known Neville was a conniving bastard, but he hadn’t wanted to be right about this, had almost convinced himself it was just paranoia. After all, Neville was a coward, and Bass wasn’t weak. But apparently the man had seen his opportunity in Bass’s injury and kidnapping - and _damn it_ , why is it _always Miles’s_ fault when things fall to pieces around him? 

He spreads his hands, smiling a very dangerous smile. “Now, Harding…”

And, about fifty feet away through the trees, the Jeep’s engine roars to life. Harding’s horse - who’s probably never heard a noise like that in its life - lunges sideways in panic, and Bass takes the man out of the saddle in one leap, following him to the ground and jamming his short sword through the Sergeant’s chin into his skull. Two seconds to strip the man’s weapons and he’s running again, toward the sound of the engine. 

The noise of Harding’s patrol is getting disturbingly close by the time Bass makes it back to the clearing and the Jeep. Two horses burst out of the woods on his left, but before Bass can turn fully to face them, Pittman thinks fast and flicks on the Jeep’s headlights, blinding both horses and riders and throwing the clearing into sharp relief. Both riders throw up a hand over their eyes, and both horses slide to a stop, rearing up a foot or two off the ground. Huh. He wouldn’t have given the tech genius that much credit. Not under pressure, anyway. Well, don’t look a gift horse in its temporarily-blinded eyes. Bass takes the opportunity to sprint the rest of the way to the Jeep, shoving Pittman out of the driver’s seat and navigating them out of the clearing and back to the road at a pace that can only be described as “foolhardy.” 

So much for a quiet night to plan and scout. Bass floors it toward the nearest bridge crossing, hoping they can get over the Raritan before they run out of gas or one of his own damn Militia puts a bullet in his brain. 

Aaron looks at him from the passenger seat, clutching his pack and the pendant close to his stomach. With his other hand, he adjusts his glasses, looks at the road, then back at Bass. 

“So, uh…” he starts, then licks his lips and tries to hang on as they rattle over a particularly vicious pothole. “Are we just not going to talk about how a bunch of _your own_ Militia soldiers just tried to kill you? Or am I missing something here? Did you, like, get an American flag tattoo while I wasn’t looking? Because last I checked - ”

Bass rips the pistol from his belt and points it at Aaron’s head without a word. The fat guy gets the message and falls silent. 

He flicks on the safety and jams the pistol back into his belt. It would be too easy to hit another pothole and blow Pittman’s brains out. He’s dragged the guy this far to use as a bargaining chip with Miles and there’s no sense in wasting all that effort. 

So he shoves back the little voice asking him what the hell he’s doing, bears down on the accelerator, and lets the corner of his mouth twist in a vicious smile as the Jeep roars over cracked asphalt hard enough to set his teeth rattling.

Maybe five minutes of silence later, Aaron releases his white-knuckled grip on the roll bar and starts rummaging through his pack. Bass wonders, idly, and without much concern, if the guy has finally snapped and is looking for a weapon to take him out. 

Instead, Aaron draws out a _pink_ iPhone, of all things. He spends a couple seconds tapping at the screen…

...and then the tinny sounds of _Born to Be Wild_ begin to play from the iPhone’s speakers. Bass gapes at Pittman long enough to almost drive the Jeep off the road, then, slowly, lets an honest-to-God _laugh_ bubble up out of his chest. “Never actually listened to the lyrics before,” he says.

Pittman nods, looking straight ahead, now gripping pendant, phone, and pack in one hand and the roll bar in the other. “Seemed appropriate.” 

The first bridge over the Raritan is blown - dust, concrete, and twisted girders stabbing at the night sky - but the old Highway 1 bridge two miles down from that is still operational, and when they drive up, headlights blazing, engine roaring, tinny little iPhone blaring, the bridge guards actually _fall to their knees_ like they’re a fucking visitation from on high. 

Like it’s a miracle.

Bass shares a glance with Aaron - wary, throat thick with something he can’t name - then floors it across the bridge before any of the guards wise up and decide to shoot them. Then they’re out and rumbling across the sand and gravel on the far side, and Bass turns the wheel upriver and, for the first time, notices the smell of smoke and the orange cast to the sky. He switches off the headlights, slowing down enough that he can navigate by the glow and by the starlight. 

“Forest fire,” he mumbles. Aaron taps the iPhone and flicks off the music. For all the good it will do them - you can still hear the engine three miles off. They round the next bend, and there it is - closer and bigger than Bass expected, hot enough to take the chill out of the night air. Perfect. Any Militia soldiers in this area are going to be so distracted fighting _that_ that maybe, just maybe, they actually won’t notice the Jeep.

“Do you think they made it across?” Aaron’s voice breaks the sudden relative quiet.

“Miles made it.” 

“But how?” Aaron casts a glance at the rubble of the Albany bridge as they rumble by it. “I mean, couldn’t they still be stuck on the other side - ”

Bass casts him an _Are you kidding me?_ look and flails a hand at the massive forest fire. “Really, Sherlock? Are we looking at the same fucking signal fire? Of course he fucking made it across.” And his voice is quiet, but there must be something in it that warns Aaron to shut up, because he does, staring out ahead of them at the moonlit bank. 

Bass sighs, and focuses on driving. If Miles had crossed where Bass would have, they’d have been washed downriver at least a mile, which would have been about where they’d started the fire - smart distraction, that - maximum impact with minimum effort. So then, assuming their course held true, they would have headed upriver back toward old Highway 27 and Edison. It was practically the same route they would have followed after Trenton.

You know, if Miles’ hadn’t nearly gotten himself killed, and if the campaign hadn’t ended in abject failure and all of them fleeing back to Philly with their junk in their hands. If that. 

_What are you doing, Bass?_ That’s Miles’ voice, in his head - and somehow, it’s _always_ Miles’s voice that questions his motives, makes him doubt himself.

 _Shut up,_ he thinks, and keeps his foot on the gas.

... 

It’s been way too long since Miles said anything, and Charlie’s actually starting to get worried that – and then, suddenly, all of his weight drops onto her shoulder and he slips from her grasp into an unconscious pile on the sand.

Yeah, _that_. That’s exactly what she was getting worried about.

“Miles. Miles, c’mon, I can’t drag you all the way upriver. We’ve gotta be almost there – another mile, maybe two - 

She drops into the sand, cold grains grinding into her knees, and tries to shove Miles over onto his side. Her shoulder - numb, after several hours of supporting half of Miles’ weight - suddenly erupts in sharp pain.

She manages - barely - to get his face out of the sand, checks for a pulse, for breathing. Both, but the heartbeat is too fast and the breathing faint enough to make her own heart rate ratchet up in alarm. 

“Miles. Miles!” 

He’s lost a lot of blood. _Maybe too much…_ The back of his jacket has gone tacky, wounds barely seeping, which should be a _good_ sign, except that several of the wounds are still open, which means he should probably be bleeding more...if he had enough blood _left_.

They have to get off the beach. Back to the horses. Back to the others and the med kit. And he’s going to need blood, but that’s three problems down the road and she hasn’t solved the first one of how to move him from this spot. 

“Dammit, Miles.” 

She can’t drag him - not in his condition, and not over this terrain. His wounds are already so coated in sand and grit, it will be a miracle if they don’t get infected. Maybe she can move fast enough on foot alone to get to the others and get Maggie’s med kit - assuming they’ve waited, and that they haven’t been pushed off the beach already by Monroe’s troops. Assuming those same troops don't find Miles while she's gone. 

They need a miracle. 

She leans down to check Miles’ breathing again, straining to hear - 

\- but there’s something wrong with the ground. There’s a slight rumble against her palms, like horse hooves, but the horses would be close enough to hear if - and then there’s a buzzing in her ears, a hum she can’t identify but that seems _so damn familiar_...

A memory, sharp and clear and stunning - laughing her head off in the back seat on the way back from the ice cream store, Uncle Miles in the front, belting out a rock song at the top of his lungs to be heard over the roar - 

\- of an _engine_.

It’s an _engine_. 

Charlie grips the back of Miles’ jacket, hauling with all her might - screw sand and grit and infections; they’re about to be _run over_ by a Militia patrol that’s probably gotten ahold of the same pendant that powered that helicopter - and starts to drag him off the beach, into the cover of the trees - 

\- Too late. 

With an increasing roar followed by a spray of wet sand and gravel, an open-topped vehicle skids to a stop in front of them. She drops Miles, grabs her knife, and takes two running steps toward the car before _Aaron’s_ voice calls out, “Charlie! Wait!” She stops as he stumbles out of the vehicle, clutching a pack and a _pendant_ , and she can ask about that later, but right now, Miles needs - 

\- and then Sebastian Monroe jumps out onto the sand from the driver’s side, takes in the sand, the blood, Charlie and her knife and Miles' crumpled form, and mutters, “Miles, you stupid bastard. You’d better not be dead.” He brushes past Charlie - on two good legs, she notes, numbly - ignoring the knife, and kneels in the sand next to Miles, listening for breathing, checking for a pulse. 

“He’s alive,” she manages, shoving aside all of her questions but pinning Aaron with a look that says, _We_ will _talk about this later._ “But he’s lost a lot of blood, and - ”

Monroe swivels to Aaron. “Whatever you did to me - do it to him.” _What?_

Aaron’s mouth opens, floundering. “I don’t even know if it will work. Harold - ”

Monroe flies to his feet, and suddenly there’s a gun pointed at Aaron’s head. “ _He’s not Harold._ Fucking _do it_ , or so help me, I will splatter your brains all over the sand!”

Aaron drops his pack, and runs for the back of the Jeep like he’s on fire.

Charlie moves to help him, but Monroe snaps his fingers. “Charlotte. Med kit, in the back. He needs blood.” She runs, rummaging next to Aaron for a second before she finds the kit - and where the hell had they gotten all of this gear? There are things in here she’s never seen - 

She drops back into the sand next to Monroe and he rifles one-handed through the med kit - keeping two fingers of his other hand on Miles’ pulse - and pulls out a length of clear tubing with two needles. 

“Pittman!” he snarls, jabbing one of the needles into the vein on his right arm. 

Aaron’s wavering voice comes from around the back of the Jeep, along with a _beep_ and a strange blue glow. “I’ll uh...I’ll be a minute. Just - give me one minute to get it booted up.”

Monroe holds up the tubing, letting it fill with blood. “He doesn’t _have_ a minute, Pittman - ”

“I can’t make it go any faster!”

Monroe takes his fingers off Miles’ pulse and reaches for his arm just as Charlie recovers from her initial surprise and snaps, “Wait! Do you even know your blood type? Or his?” 

Monroe gives her a level look, and hands her the needle. “I’ve given him blood before. After Trenton. But if you’d rather let him die, be my guest.” Charlie stares into those blazing blue eyes for a second and then reaches for Miles’ arm.

“Left arm,” snaps Monroe. “Fucker hates it when his sword-arm’s sore.” 

As Charlie slides the needle home - in Miles’ _left_ arm - she asks, “Trenton?” It’s the one piece of information in all of this insanity that she can grasp, so she reaches for it, mostly to distract herself while Aaron does...whatever it is that Aaron’s doing.

“He got shot in the stomach.” Monroe shakes his head, edge of his mouth quirking. “Hell of a gut wound. Can’t believe he made it, actually.” 

There’s another _beep_ from behind them, and Aaron comes around the side of the Jeep, holding something blue and blinking between two fingers. “I, uh...I think I’ve got it.”

“Well, hurry it up, Doctor Frankenstein,” Monroe snaps. “I’ve only got so much blood.” 

“Look,” Aaron hesitates, voice shaking. “I can’t guarantee that this will - ”

“Just fucking do it already!” both Charlie and Monroe yell at the same time. 

Aaron takes a deep breath through his nose, kneels next to Miles, puts one hand on his shoulder…

...and jams the blinking capsule into one of the open wounds on Miles’s back.

There’s a long, strained silence. Charlie bows her head, searching Miles’ face in the darkness for any sign of life. Monroe touches his fingers again to the pulse point in Miles’ throat. Charlie notes, with some surprise, that his hands are shaking badly. 

For a long, _long_ time, nothing happens.

Then Miles jolts.

And starts to _scream_.


End file.
